Gramophone Magazine – “Timbrally, the performances are ravishing. Bedenko’s tone is the most luxurious velvet.” The multi award-winning, Ukrainian-born American clarinetist Alexander Bedenko has appeared in recitals at Carnegie’s Weill Hall, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Steinway Hall, Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C and UNESCO in Paris. Graduated from the prestigious The Curtis Institute of Music, Alexander Bedenko collaborated with artists such as Vladimir Spivakov, Christoph Eschenbach, Nikolai Lugansky, Kirill Gernstein, Daniel Hope, Nabuko Imai, Dmitry Sitkovetsky, Gautier Capucon and with the Borodin, Jerusalem, Alma, Ariel, Endellion, Zemlinsky and Orion string quartets. Solo appearances include the Romanian National Radio orchestra, Uzbekistan and Ukraine National Symphony orchestras, the Filarmonica Arturo Toscanini, the Moscow Virtuosi chamber orchestra and chamber music recitals at the Colmar, Verbier, Spoleto, Lerici, Malta, Miami, Mozaic and Schubertiade festivals. In 2019, Alexander Bedenko released his acclaimed debut album on Orchid classics with Kyril Zlotnikov and Itamar Golan as well as “Finding Home” album on Sony classics in March 2022. In 2021, Muzyka Edition has published worldwide Alexander Bedenko’s transcriptions of Tchaikovsky album of pieces for clarinet and piano. A former Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra principal clarinetist, Alexander Bedenko was invited by Riccardo Muti as guest principal clarinetist for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra European tour and has performed as guest principal with the London Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra (London), The Philadelphia Orchestra and the Cleveland Orchestra under Franz Welser-Möst. Alexander Bedenko is a Selmer Paris and D’Addario woodwinds Artist.

Distinguished by its virtuosity, probing musical insight, and impassioned, fiery performances, the Ariel Quartet has garnered critical praise worldwide for more than twenty years. Formed when the members were just teenagers studying at the Jerusalem Academy Middle School of Music and Dance in Israel, the Ariel was named a recipient of the prestigious Cleveland Quartet Award, granted by Chamber Music America in recognition of artistic achievement and career support. The Quartet serves as the Faculty Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music, where they direct the chamber music program and present a concert series in addition to maintaining a busy touring schedule in the United States and abroad. The quartet has won numerous international prizes: First Prize at the Schubert and Music of Modernity competition in Gratz, Grand Prize at the 2006 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition and the Székely Prize for the performance of Bartók’s String Quartet No. 4, and Third Prize at the Banff International String Quartet Competition. About its performances at the Banff competition, the American Record Guide described the group as “a consummate ensemble gifted with utter musicality and remarkable interpretive power” and noted, in particular, their playing of Beethoven’s monumental Quartet in A minor, Op. 132, as “the pinnacle of the competition.”