biography
with Maestro Leonard Bernstein (ca 1988) and Maestro Lorin Maazel (2009).
Yaniv Segal, founder and conductor of the Chelsea Symphony in New York and described in Esquire Magazine as a rising star who is "redefining classical music," has performed worldwide as a singer, violinist, actor and conductor. Last year the New York Times praised his interpretation of Mahler's Fourth Symphony as an "earnest, vibrant account." In the summer of 2009, Yaniv was a participant at Lorin Maazel's first Conducting Masterclass at the Castleton Festival in Virginia, as well as at the Vendome Conducting Academy with the Ensemble Orchestral de Paris in France. He recently finished his first year as the music director of the Michigan Pops Orchestra in Ann Arbor, in which the orchestra increased to 104 musicians and drew some of the largest audiences in the organization's 15-year history.
The son of a New York Philharmonic violinist and respected violinmaker, Yaniv began to play the violin at age four and began singing at age eight. As a boy soprano, Yaniv sang at the Metropolitan Opera and later played the role of Colin in the first national tour of the Secret Garden. His acting career continued with a role in Tom Stoppard's "Hapgood" at Lincoln Center Theater. As an undergraduate at Vassar College, Yaniv co-founded and served as music director of the Mahagonny Ensemble - a community ensemble dedicated to music of the past 100 years - and as assistant conductor to the Vassar College Orchestra. He has since worked with the New York Youth Symphony and Princeton Symphony and at the Manhattan School of Music. Yaniv has also conducted the Ensemble Orchestral de Paris, Castleton Festival, University Symphony, Greenwich Village and New Symphony (Bulgaria) Orchestras, the Wroclaw (Poland) and Thuringen (Germany) Philharmonics, and the Ukrainian State, University of Michigan and Stamford Young People's Symphonies.
Yaniv is a recipient of the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans, and the Ada L. Hopkins Scholarship at the University of Michigan where he is pursuing a doctorate in Orchestral Conducting under the tutelage of Maestro Kenneth Kiesler.