Sharon Kam

At sixteen Sharon Kam made her orchestral debut with the Israel Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta; at twenty-one she won the ARD International Music Competition, and the orchestras of Europe, the United States and Asia have engaged her ever since, alongside a chamber career she has never set aside. Israeli-German, she has carried the clarinet repertory from Mozart and Weber to Penderecki, Herbert Willi and Iván Erőd, and her recordings have taken the Diapason d'Or, the German Record Critics' Award and Opus Klassik. She has been professor of clarinet at the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover since 2022, and played with the Sofia Philharmonic at Bulgaria Hall in February 2020. She took the ECHO award as instrumentalist of the year twice, in 1998 for Weber with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and Kurt Masur and in 2006 for a disc of Spohr, Weber, Rossini and Mendelssohn with the Leipzig Radio Orchestra. Mozart has run through the whole career: the Quintet with the Guarneri Quartet at Carnegie Hall early on, a Concerto televised live from the National Theatre in Prague in the composer's anniversary year, and then a recording of both works on the basset clarinet with the Haydn Philharmonie. Several of her records were conducted by her husband, Gregor Bühl.