Ilya Ram

Ilya Ram is an Israeli American conductor based in Germany. He is the Musical Director Orchester’91 in Hamburg, and the newly appointed conductor of the Leipzig University Orchestra and Orchester Benjamin Franklin in Berlin. Ram is a prize winner of the 8th Central-German MDR conducting competition. He is also a recipient of several prestigious scholarships including the AICF “Sharet” Scholarship, the DAAD Scholarship for his studies in Germany and two-time bursary student of the Dartington Music Festival. He was previously assistant to Maestro Guillermo Garcia Calvo at the Theater Chemnitz as well Assistant Conductor at the Youth Symphony Orchestra Dresden.

This season he will debut at the Gewandhaus Leipzig as well as in the Theater Chemnitz as a Guest Resident Conductor, conducting performances of Swan Lake, Weiße Rose by Udo Zimmermann and a symphonic concert with the Robert-Schumann Philharmonie.

Ram was selected along three of his peers to participate in the first ever Bayreuther Festspiele masterclass for conductors, where he assisted and conducted rehearsals of “Tannhäuser for Children” and received lessons from Maestros Christian Thielemann, Marek Janowski, and Hartmut Hänchen. He has participated in several other international masterclasses and festivals, studying amongst others with Maestros Neeme Järvi, Graeme Jenkins, Tim Redmond, Johannes Schlaefli, Pierre-Andre Valade and Nicolas Pasquet.

Ram enjoys working with professional orchestras as well as youth and amateur, as he believes that it is a common passion for music that brings people into music making, and that it is his role as a conductor to help them hone this passion while working towards the highest level of musicality and professionalism, regardless of the level of playing. Among the orchestras he conducted are the Robert-Schumann Philharmonie, Dartington Festival Orchestra, the Gstaad Festival Orchestra, MDR Sinfonieorchester, Südwest Philharmonie Konstanz, Hradec Kralove Philharmonie, Elblandphilharmonie Sachsen, Brandenburger Symphoniker, Netanya Kibbutz Orchestra, MAV Symphony, OFUNAM (Mexico) and the Meitar Ensemble for contemporary music.

Prior to beginning his formal studies Ram spent a year doing educational volunteer work with children in underprivileged communities in Israel. During his studies he continued volunteering at the Israeli branch of Physicians for Human Rights. In 2015 he graduated Cum Laude from the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music in Tel-Aviv with a B.A. in Orchestral Conducting and Musicology. He is currently finishing his master’s degree in Orchestral Conducting at the Hochschule für Musik “Carl Maria von Weber” in Dresden, in the class of Prof. Ekkehard Klemm and is taking part in the APT Program at the UdK Berlin, studying with Maestros Steven Sloane and Harry Curtis.