Ezra Shcolnik

Sixteen-year-old violinist and composer Ezra Shcolnik is a first-place winner of the Jackie McGehee Young Artists’ Competition. Ezra performed his own composition, March and Fugue for Two Solo Violins and Orchestra, at age 12 with the Performance Santa Fe Orchestra. He has been a member of the PSF Orchestra for the past four holiday seasons, most recently serving as Associate Concertmaster. In summer 2017, Ezra attended the Aspen Music Festival and School as a New Horizons Fellow. He will return to Aspen for the 2018 summer season. Ezra is a homeschooled rising senior who will enter his fifth year at the Colburn Music Academy in Los Angeles, where he studies violin with Robert Lipsett. In addition, he just completed his first year in the Los Angeles Philharmonic Composer Fellowship Program. Ezra’s pieces have been premiered in Santa Fe, Los Angeles, at the Cleveland Institute of Music, and at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore. He has twice been a finalist for an ASCAP Foundation Young Composer Award, both for March and Fugue and for his first string quartet. Ezra performs with the Colburn Orchestra and the Colburn Academy Virtuosi. He plays on an 1825 Giovanni Francesco Pressenda violin, on generous loan from the Mandell Collection of Southern California.  Ezra is a resident of Santa Fe and is the son of Caren Friedman and Richard Shcolnik.