Shirley Brill


Shirley Brill is an Israeli clarinetist living in Germany.

Education and career

Born in Petah Tikva, Israel, Brill received her musical education in Israel from Yitzhak Katzap at the Petah Tikva Conservatory. From the year 2000, she continued her studies in Germany with Sabine Meyer at the Musikhochschule Lübeck, as well as in the United States with Richard Stoltzman at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston.
At the age of 16, she began her solo career with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Zubin Mehta. Since then she has appeared with a large number of international orchestras, such as the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin in the Great Hall of the Berlin Philharmonie, and collaborated with the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra, the Geneva Chamber Orchestra, the Symphony Orchestra of the National Theater of Prague, the Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Munich Symphony Orchestra and the New Philharmonic of Westphalia. Brill has worked with such conductors as Daniel Barenboim, Jeffrey Tate and Patrick Lange among others.
She has been invited to international festivals such as the BBC Proms, the Festival of Radio France and Montpellier Languedoc Roussillon, the Schubertiade in Austria, the Festival of Davos, Ljubljana, the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, the Mecklenburg Vorpommern Festival, the Heidelberger Frühling, the Rheingau Musik Festival, and the Spannungen Chamber Music Festival.
Her chamber music partners include Daniel Barenboim, Janine Jansen, Sabine Meyer, Emmanuel Pahud, Tabea Zimmermann, the Fauré Piano Quartet and the Quatuor Terpsycordes.
Since 2009, Brill has been the principal clarinetist of the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra conducted by Daniel Barenboim.
From 2012 Shirley Brill was a guest professor at the Hochschule für Musik "Hanns Eisler" in Berlin and since 2016 a faculty member at the Barenboim–Said Akademie. Since October 2018, Brill has been appointed Professor of Clarinet at the Hochschule für Musik Saar in Saarbrücken, Germany.

Personal life

Brill is married to Jonathan Aner, Israeli pianist, professor of chamber music in Berlin and her partner in the Duo Brillaner. They have 3 daughters, and live in Berlin.

Instruments

Shirley Brill plays on clarinets with French fingering system, individually made for her by the manufacturer Schwenk & Seggelke. She has normal clarinets in Bb and A made of grenadilla, mopane and boxwood and a basset clarinet in A made of boxwood.

Awards

2005: Duo Brillaner Debut with Jonathan Aner, including:
2008: Weber & Baermann, with the Terpsycordes Quartet, the Geneva Chamber Orchestra and Patrick Lange, including:
2009: Petite Pièce: French Miniatures for Clarinet and Piano with Jonathan Aner, including:
2012: Françaix & Prokofiev with the Romanian National Radio Orchestra and Adrian Morar, including:
2017: Brahms & Janáček Sonatas with Jonathan Aner, including:
The artist is represented on YouTube with audio and video recordings, with audio recordings on Spotify and Deezer.