Jerusalem-based cellist Michal Beck won first prize in the Paul Ben Haim Competition of Israeli music on Saturday evening in Tel Aviv. Beck, who currently serves in the IDF as a musician, beat seven runners-up in the final stage and 23 instrumentalists and singers who took part in the entire, three-stage competition. Clarinetist Ido Azrad won second prize, soprano Gan-Ya Ben-Gur Axelrod won third prize and Hilla Ofek, harp, won the honorary prize for performance of a piece by Ben Haim in the competition, devoted to excellence in the performance of Israeli concert music. Beck, 18, was the youngest of the 23 participants. She is a student of Hillel Zori, head of the String Department at the Buchman-Mehta School of Music in Tel Aviv. The biannual competition is sponsored by the Culture and Sports Ministry, Musical Youth for the Performance of Israeli Music and the Israeli Broadcast Authority’s classical music radio station, The Voice of Music.
