About our project:
This tour is a cultural and educational project.
It takes place in the beginning of May 2013 in the inspiring turkish city of Diyarbakir. With its 1.5 million inhabitants it has a 10’000 years old authentic and rich cultural heritage of Mesopotamia. For many centuries it has been one of the most important cities along the Silk road. We want to share mutual musical interests, knowledge, experiences and development with the local musicians and young students. This exchange enriches our own minds by adapting inspiring new forms of artistic expression. It is providing us with fresh insights that broaden our horizons.
We will present ourselves on stage with the following program:
- E.H.Grieg – Holberg suite for strings
- J.S.Bach – Concerto d-minor for two violins & strings
- A.Skoumal – «Shalik« for violin solo & strings
- J.Brahms – Hungarian Dance No. 5 arr. for strings
- A.Skoumal – Folk songs arr. for violin solo & strings
We also proudly present our member Brusk Zanganeh (ZHdK Alumnus 2012) as a soloist in his home country.
We will perform four concerts:
- The first concert will be held in the municipality hall of Diyarbakir for a selected audience and several diplomats of International Embassies.
- The second concert will take place in the Armenian church Surp Giragos (3rd century) being one of the biggest and oldest churches in the Middle East. Recently renovated and now frequently used for chamber music concerts, it will be the first time ever that a string orchestra performs in it!
- The third concert will be in the new concert hall of the University with 2500 seats.
- The last performance of our ZHdK Strings Tour will be an open air concert at «Kent Terasi».
This project is organized in collaboration with and on personal invitation of Osman Baydemir the Mayor of Diyarbakir, Turkey.
Since we, as a non profit organisation, propose to play without getting any fee, Mayor Osman Baydemir wants to present all four concerts free of admission to reach a larger scale of population.
In addition to the four concerts our leader Prof. Rudolf Koelman and advanced members of our String orchestra will be giving workshops and master classes for children and students from the local conservatory. These young people of Diyarbakir will perform a concert in return!
A TV crew will be following us during the whole tour to produce a documentary about this remarkable project.
There will also be local radio and television broadcasts of several of the concerts.
Why we need your support:
We need your financial support because the total budget for this tour is CHF 35ʼ000 and weʼve got so far 20ʼ000 of this amount sponsored.
With an additional CHF 15ʼ000 from your side we can make it!
About us:
We, the ZHdK Strings, are a young and dynamic ensemble with nineteen selected students from the distinguished Zurich University of the Arts. Our leader and initiator is violinist and violin Prof. Rudolf Koelman who founded the orchestra 2005.
We are a «Trägerverein» which means it is a non-profit organisation and we donʼt pay our musicians any fee. Since 2005 we performed over a 100 concerts. 2011-2012 we gave 18 concerts in Switzerland, 3 in South Korea and 12 in Italy.
Our aims and goals:
- We need to make various high professional performing experiences to be prepared for our near future.
- We want to present our selves on distinguished concert stages in Switzerland and abroad.
- We encourage the best amoung us to play as soloists with our orchestra in their home country.
Tango Encore!
Korea Tour 2012 with our member Dong-Hwan Yoon (ZHdK Alumni 2012) as a soloist in his home country.