Avi Ostrowsky

Avi Ostrowsky was born in 1939 in Givatayim

Avi Ostrowsky was born in 1939 in Givatayim. As a youth he planned to live on a kibbutz, so he studied mechanics. During those studies he formed a choir and led it without knowing how to read music.

At 17 he met conductor Gary Bertini, who encouraged him to study music. He studied at the Music Teachers College in Tel Aviv and then conducting and composition at the Rubin Academy with Bertini and Mordechai Seter. He worked as a mechanic to pay for his studies.

After his army service he joined Kibbutz Lahav. In 1965 he became music director and conductor of the Kol Israel Radio Choir in Jerusalem. A 1966 scholarship took him to Vienna to study with Hans Swarowsky, and in 1968 he won first prize at the Nikolai Malko Competition in Copenhagen.

In 1968 he became music director of the Haifa Symphony Orchestra. He founded the Israel Netanya Kibbutz Orchestra in 1970 and the Israel Sinfonietta Beer Sheva in 1973. He later led the Antwerp Philharmonic Orchestra and, from 1989, the Norwegian Radio Symphony Orchestra in Oslo, before returning to the Kibbutz Orchestra in 1998.