The Israeli-born cellist
Inbal Segev has had an internationally significant career that has included performances of both traditional and contemporary works.
Segev was born in Israel around 1974 into a musical family. Drawn to a miniature cello in a music shop when she was five, she made rapid progress on it and gave a concert the following year. When she was eight, she played for Israel's president. At 15 she was heard by
Isaac Stern, who asked her who she wanted to study with, and, upon hearing her answer,
Aldo Parisot at Yale University, picked up the phone and arranged for her to enroll there. Moving to the U.S. at 16 in 1990, she spoke little English and immersed herself in the cello, making debut appearances under
Zubin Mehta with the
Berlin Philharmonic and the
Israel Philharmonic orchestras the following year. In 1997 she performed
Henri Dutilleux's Trois strophes sure le nom de Sacher at Carnegie Hall. She studied at Yale and at the Juilliard School in New York; one of her teachers at the latter was renowned
Beaux Arts Trio cellist
Bernard Greenhouse, who had been a student of
Pablo Casals. After several American and international competition prizes, including one at the Pablo Casals International Cello Competition in 2000,
Segev spent several years as a struggling freelance cellist in New York and has attributed the growth of her career to marrying and having children: "I think having the family took enormous pressure off me," she told Inside Chic. "It put things in perspective and I didn't feel like it was the career, career, career." Indeed, she released a debut recital album, featuring works by
Beethoven and
Boccherini, on Opus One in 2001.
Segev released a cycle of
Bach's Suites for Solo Cello on the Vox label. She was signed to Avie and, in
2018, issued a recital with pianist
Juho Pohjonen, of music by
Chopin (the comparatively rare Cello Sonata in G minor, Op. 65),
Schumann, and
Grieg. She lives in New York with her husband and three children, all of whom play instruments.
Segev is a founding member of the Amerigo Trio, and her chamber music collaborators include
Emanuel Ax,
Jeremy Denk, and
Anne Akiko Meyers. She is the creator of a YouTube master class series, Musings with Inbal Segev, that has notched some 500,000 views.