Since becoming active as an award winning international concert cellist, music pedagogue and recording artist in the United States of America in 2010 and being sponsored in 2016 and 2019 for his extraordinary abilities as a musician, the enchanting and dexterous cellist, Steve Kramer, a descendant of the cello school of Piatigorsky, has proven to be one of the most prominent and colorful musicians of today, ascending into classical music’s highest class of performance and musical education. His silvery, singing tone, perspicacious intelligence, musical inquisitiveness and charismatic personality have led him to build memorable bridges to his audience while exploring versatile repertoire from the four corners of the world. His childhood experience studying the art of cello playing under the tutelage of grandfather and former violinist in the Kiev Philharmonic, Vladimir Yeshayavitch Novak, the greatest Scandinavian cellist of the twentieth century, Erling Bløndal Bengtsson in Denmark, and studying the art of chamber music with Yehudi Menuhin and Peter Norris at the Yehudi Menuhin School in England, has most certainly contributed a significant element to his enlightening style and the invigorating and very expressive musical individuality that distinguishes his playing and teaching.
Steve Kramer is the award-winning recipient of the internationally prestigious Jacob Gade Foundation’s 36th Grand Prize. The prize supports an outstanding musician who possesses progressive and penetrating musicality and pizzazz and who desires to have a life-long career as a major international artist and performer. Since receiving the award in 1998, Steve Kramer has collaborated with composers from all over the world. He has performed contemporary music by composers Jennifer Higdon, David Finko, Ben Steinberg, Nimrod Borenstein, Daniel Dorff, Sidney Grolnic, Eleonor Sigal, Andrea Clearfield, Cynthia Folio, Eugene Magalif, Victor Frost and Ib Nørholm, as well as compositions by Scandinavian composers and composers who lost their lives in World Wars I & II. Steve Kramer has also worked in contemporary styles of entertainment for the composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, composing for adventurer and film-director Ivars Silis and performed, recorded and toured with The Three Tenors, The Who, Marco Beltrami, Sarah Brightman, Elaine Paige and the Philadelphia-based guru of jazz, pianist Tom Lawton. Furthermore, Steve Kramer was awarded the 1994 Bernhard Rosenfeld Foundation Artist Prize, which supports outstanding musical children from families who emigrated from the former Soviet Union. In addition, he was awarded the Talent Prize and Gold Medal at the national music competition, the Berlingske Music Competition, in Copenhagen, Denmark, and garnered an Artist Prize given by Pope John Paul II in Orvieto at the Orvieto Musica festival in Italy. Numerous Danish foundations, including the Jacob Gade Foundation, Augustinus Foundation, the Royal Danish family and English benefactors, generously subsidized Steve Kramer’s early education.
In the 2014-15 season, Steve Kramer made his appearance as a soloist and chamber musician at the Barnes Foundation and the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia. His recent invitations by patrons regularly bring Steve Kramer to Europe and South America. In the U.S. Steve Kramer continues his passionate involvement with educating less privileged young people. He emphasizes the utmost importance of training children in classical music as part of their academic education. Children born into poverty receive free of charge lessons in their local communities. In 2012-13 Steve Kramer debuted at the Kimmel Center’s Verizon Hall and Perelman Theater and the Philadelphia Art Museum. Internationally, Steve Kramer has worked with such prominent European orchestras and chamber ensembles as the Yehudi Menuhin Orchestra, led by violinist Yehudi Menuhin; the Detmold Chamber Orchestra, led by violinist Tibor Varga; the Malmö Music High School Orchestra, led by violist Josef Kodousek, and the Royal Danish Symphony Orchestra, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, Amsterdam Symphony Orchestra and ensembles and orchestras in England, Germany, the Netherlands, France and Italy. He has performed chamber music and recitals in many parts of the world; in the Concertgebouw and Hermitage in Amsterdam, the Netherlands; the Wiener Musikverein, in Vienna, Austria; Barbican Hall, Royal Festival Hall and Wigmore Hall in London, England; Le Corum in Montpellier, France; Radio City, in New York City, the Ruth Eckerd Hall, in Florida, United States, and more numerous.
Steve Kramer has performed as soloist or chamber musician for and received artistic inspirations and guidance from violinist Isaac Stern, cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, violin pedagogues Maricio Fuks, Milan Vitek and Tim Frederiksen, cellist Vladimir Chevel, cellist Heinrich Schiff, Martha Casals and members in the Alban Berg Quartet, the Amadeus Quartet and the Borodin Quartet. He has extensive experience playing in orchestras led by conductors such as Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Yuri Temirkanov, Kurt Masur, Bernhard Haitink, Neemi Jarvi and Mikhail Jurowski. Steve Kramer has appeared at prestigious festivals such as the International Kammermusik-Akademie Kronberg in Taunus, Germany; Ralph Kirshbaum’s Manchester International Cello Festival RNCM in England; the Cervo Music Academy and Orvieto Musica in Italy; La Fete de la Musique in Nice, France; Festival de Radio France in Montpellier, France; the Jeunes Prodiges Au Palais in La Grand Motte in France; and in Ajaccio, Bonifacio and Porto Vecchio, Corsica.
Born in Copenhagen, Denmark, Steve Kramer started playing the violin at the age of three with his grandfather, Vladimir Yeshayavitch Novak. Picking up the cello at age five, Steve Kramer soon continued his studies with his first formal cello teacher, Erling Bløndal Bengtsson. He made his debut at 12 years of age, playing as a soloist while touring with orchestras in Scandinavia. He further developed his musicianship under the supervision of five other giants of classical music: violinist Yehudi Menuhin and pianist and composer Peter Norris, with whom Steve Kramer studied chamber music at the Yehudi Menuhin School in London; cellist Karine Georgian at the Hochschule für Musik-Detmold in Germany; and private lessons with cellist Boris Pergamenschikow in Berlin, Germany, and cellist Alexander Sinelnikov in Jerusalem, Israel. An American resident since 2010, Steve Kramer now devotes most of his time in the United States, South America and Israel. He has been a most active performer and educator of music, continuing to develop his artistic collaboration with the young generations of America, teaching out of his family home and private studio on Florida’s west coast, in Sarasota and exhibiting chamber music in a myriad of ways. His family’s chamber music series; “Salon Sarasota” welcoming musicians and artists and audiences from away-far and locally. Steve Kramer teaches emerging young artists from across the world and devotes much of his time teaching underprivileged youth and passionately bringing live-performances to the sick, infirm, and veterans of war. Steve’s more recent endeavors involve giving master-classes at a number of organizations including future performances with his ensemble’s, the ‘Rachmaninoff Chamber Ensembles’.
As part of an old European tradition of sharing the musical arts in intimate settings with friends and families, Steve Kramer puts great emphasis on performing chamber-music concerts in artistic collaboration with impresarios and diplomatic missions with embassies. In 2018/19 the ‘Rachmaninoff Ensembles’ began promoting American and Scandinavian compositions internationally. Most recent invitations brought the ensemble to Argentina, Buenos Aires and Brazil: São Carlos, São José dos Campos and Piracicaba. This artistic series contained both recitals and master-classes, sharing the heart of America and Denmark in music and honoring outstanding composers such as the great Jacob Gade and George Gershwin and Leonard Bernstein, in celebration of his 100th anniversary.
Steve Kramer’s artistic and educational collaborations also included having the honorable positions of Director of Music at theaters and at The Veterans School for the Music and Arts, in Philadelphia. The Veterans School for the Music and Arts, with generous support from the Kal and Lucille Rudman Foundation, provided artistic outlets for veterans and first responders and their families and fostering artistic talent among them. Steve Kramer provides performances and master-classes in conjunction with Tomoko Torii, the president/executive director and co-founder of the Harmony and Peace Foundation in New York City, which promotes world peace, focuses on making global and local societies better and seeks unity through cooperation.
Steve Kramer is the founder of ‘The Steve Kramer Entertainment Group’, which presents the highest-class performances, educational outreach, and master classes. The core ensemble, consisting of award-winning internationally acclaimed artists based in the United States and Israel generates the ‘Rachmaninoff Chamber Ensembles’ and its subsets of various ensembles conducted by Steve Kramer, which perform all styles and genres from the early renaissance to contemporary. The musicians collaborate with a wide range of artists who are accredited from the United States finest institutions.
The Steve Kramer Entertainment Group’s performance experiences have reached prestigious clients and the world-renowned concert halls, amongst them, Radio City Music Hall, Kimmel Center, MGM Grand, Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia Art Museum, Franklin Institute, Glen Foerd Estate, Valley Forge Tourism & Convention Board, Novo Nordisk A/S, Datwyler, Ruth Eckerd Hall, Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall and the Ringling Museum.