INFEMNITY™ Arts and Culture News

In the wake of the widely publicized sexual-abuse claims brought by violinist Lara St. John  against the late Jascha Brodsky, her violin teacher at the Curtis Institute of Music (read the article here ), I decided that it was time to share my own story of abuse that took place when I was a student there.  Nina Kennedy at age 9 The kinds of abuse I endured there were verbal and emotional. The perpetrator was clearly a racist, but I did not have the skills at the time to handle such abuse. It was devastating when it became clear to me that my teacher was not going to help me pursue a career, because a concert career was all I had ever imagined for myself. It had been my parents’ dream for me, and their mothers’ dreams of both of them. Little did I know that this one racist, elderly white woman set out to crush their dreams, and to destroy me in the process. The year I auditioned to enter the Curtis Institute of Music there were three openings in the ...

Débora Waldman Orchestral conductor  Débora Waldman  is the special guest on The Noshing with Nina Show this month. You will see clips of an interview that was filmed in her home in Paris, along with clips of some of her performances conducting l'Orchestre National de France and l'Orchestre Idomeneo .  A native of São Paulo, Brazil,  Dé bora Waldman accompanied her family to Israel in a Kibbutz where she lived until the age of fourteen. She then pursued her musical studies in Buenos Aires, in the Universidad Católica de Argentina. She is the only student in the history of this university that has been awarded two golden medals, both in orchestra conducting and composition. In 2002, she perfected her formation in Paris (where she lives) with Janos Fürst, and with F.X. Roth and M. Levinas in the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique (CNSM). Hailed as an energetic and profound young conductor,  Dé bora Waldman was discovered by the Or...