vielle, viola d'arco, recorder
Uri Smilansky was born and brought up in Israel where he is well known as a performer on both recorder and viola da gamba. Whilst there he won a number of competitions; including first prize in the Aviv Competition for Early Music, second prize in the Haifa International Recorder Competition and for the last 12 years has enjoyed scholarships from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation. He studied with Gershon Prensky, Drora Bruck and Myrna Herzog, among others, and taught recorder at the Petach-Tikva conservatoire, and coached ensembles in the Thekma-Yelin school for Music and the Arts. In 2001 he moved to Basel to study vielle with Randall Cook and recorder with Conrad Steinmann and Corina Marti in the prestigious Medieval department of the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, from where he graduated with honours in 2005. In addition to his studies he worked as an assistant to Anthony Rooley, coaching a project of Renaissance polyphony, and Crawford Young, teaching ‘pure Organum’ improvisation. He performs worldwide and has taken part in many recordings and radio broadcasts with a number of both medieval and baroque ensembles including La Morra, the Earle his Viols, the Phoenix ensemble and Dulce Melos, as well as being co-director of Le Basile.
In 2010 Uri Smilansky received his doctor's degree at the University of Exeter (UK) with Yolanda Plumley with his thesis on the music of the Ars Subtilior.