Anat Malkin Almani, Violin, Inesa Sinkevych, Piano.
Astraeus Duo (Anat Malkin Almani, violin, viola; Inesa Sinkevych, piano) is an Israeli duo based in New York. Colleagues from the Manhattan School of Music, they started playing together in 2010. Since then, they have been heard at various halls and festivals around the US. Their repertoire ranges from Baroque to 21st Century music, with a special focus on Soviet and Jewish music. See below for their individual bios.
Named as one of the “gifted young violinists who are among the vanguard leading the march of violin art into the 21st century” by Henry Roth in his book entitled Violin Virtuosos from Paganini to the 21st Century, Anat Malkin Almani began her violin studies at the age of five with her father, Professor Isaac Malkin. By the age of six, she was already performing as soloist with symphony orchestras. At ten, she embarked on her first world tour, comprised of recitals and performances with orchestras, throughout Norway, Mexico and the United States. She made her Carnegie Hall debut at the age of sixteen under the baton of Alexander Schneider. Additional performances, both with orchestra and in recital, have taken her throughout Argentina, France, Germany, Holland, Israel, Italy, Russia, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Ms. Almani has been featured on the McGraw Hill Young Artists Showcase hosted by Robert Sherman, broadcast over New York radio. She was featured in a 60-minute television interview on globally broadcast Russian Television International, as well as having appeared in features on CBS and Israeli television. Performances have also been broadcast live across South American television, as well as over Israeli radio.
An avid chamber musician, Ms. Almani performs annually with distinguished musicians David Geber, Mikhail Kopelman and Julia Lichten, as part of the Academy of Music Festival in Nyack, New York. She has also collaborated with other well-known artists such as Emanuel Borok, Nicholas Mann, Peter Winograd and the Aviv Quartet.
Ms. Almani performs regularly with her sister, violinist Bracha Malkin, as part of The Malkin Duo. The Duo is a prizewinner of the Artist International Auditions and the Trinity Concert Series Auditions. They made their debut as a duo in Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall. To critical acclaim, the sisters have given recitals in Argentina, Colombia, Israel, Italy, Uruguay and throughout the United States. The Duo has performed numerous recitals at Weill Recital Hall, has given the world-premiere of David Ward-Steinman’s Concerto for Two Violins in San Diego and has appeared as soloists with orchestras worldwide, including the Orquesta Filarmonica de Bogota. The Malkin Duo’s first disc together is due to be released in 2012.
Ms. Almani’s training includes work with Josef Gingold; the Manhattan School of Music, where she studied with Isaac Malkin; The Juilliard School, as a student of Cho-Liang Lin, where she received a Bachelor of Music degree; and the Maastricht Conservatorium in Holland, where she worked with Boris Belkin and received a Master of Music degree, cum laude. She is presently on the Violin and Viola faculties of the Manhattan School of Music Precollege Division.
While she was still a student at The Juilliard School, Ms. Almani was involved in a devastating car accident that severely damaged her left hand and right shoulder. Unable to play for more than eight years, she underwent 12 operations to repair severed nerves, muscles, tendons and ligaments in her hand and shoulder and to remove embedded shards of glass and gravel. Despite predictions that she would never play again and years of rehabilitation, she returned to the stage. The press dubbed her comeback as “a miracle that by all laws of nature should never have happened….”