Artists in residence

Pianist and composer, Yakir Arbib is an internationally acclaimed improviser hailed by the press as “the king of improvisation” for his ability to create entire musical compositions on the spot. The Israeli musician tours the world inspiring crowds with his virtuosity on the piano and his own original blending of classical music and jazz. 

A Berklee College of Music alumni, Yakir Arbib has won several international prizes, including the America-Israel Cultural Foundation for young talents (2006, 2007, 2008, 2009) and the Massimo Urbani International Jazz Award (2008). In July 2015, he won Second Prize at the Montreux International Piano Jazz Competition. He was declared as “the most extremely original pianist” by the jury, and was invited to perform on the international scene with renowned musicians Al Jarreau, Nils Petter Molvaer and Kurt Rosenwinkel. At age 19, he was signed by the European Philology Jazz Records (Chet Baker, Lee Konitz and Phil Woods) under which he released his first album in trio Portrait, in 2009.

Yakir Arbib currently tours the world both as a solo artist giving piano recitals, and with other groups which perform his music. He has appeared in venues such as the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (Washington D.C.), Tanna Schulich Hall (Montreal), the Jerusalem Theater (Jerusalem), Montreux Palace Theater (Montreux), and the Teatro Vascello (Rome) among others. His compositions are commissioned by such notable ensembles as ALEA III, The Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, Triple Helix Piano Trio and the Stradivari String Sextet. Since June 2019, he is signed by the JMS label in France.

Yakir Arbib has been featured on radio stations worldwide such as CIBL 101.5 (Montreal, Canada), TSF Jazz (Paris, France), RTS (Switzerland), Dobop (Tel Aviv, Israel) and on Italian national tv, SKY CLASSICA and Medici tv.

Luciana Arbus-Scandiffio is a former Wallace Stegner Fellow in poetry at Stanford University. She received her MFA at the Michener Center for Writers and her BA at Bennington College. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Poetry Review, Bennington Review, Poetry Northwest, and Oxford Poetry. She has two lesbian moms and is originally from New Jersey.

Viktoriia Archaia was born in Moscow to a Russian-Georgian family where dance and music are an integral part of the culture. She graduated from the Moscow Regional College of Arts – Department of Folk Dance, and from the Moscow State Institute of Culture – Faculty of World Dances and Contemporary Dance, and the Vaganova Ballet Academy. Her training was also complemented by courses in psychology and other artistic fields: academic singing, photography, and hypnotherapy.

From 2015 to 2018, she was a dancer with the Boroditsky Denis Dance Company, and in 2018, she founded her own troupe, Libertatem Dance Company. For two years, from 2020 to 2022, she led the dance troupe of the Voronezh Chamber Theater (Russia). In 2020, Viktoriia Archaia participated in the Russian-French contemporary dance festival “DansePlatfomar” with the performance “Triptych.Autoportrait”. She received the special “Coup de cœur” award from the French jury and became one of the three laureates invited to present her work in Montpellier.In June 2021, her creation “Triptych” was presented at the Domaine D’o (Montpellier).In 2022, she was nominated for the national theater award “Golden Mask” (3 nominations: best choreographer, best dancer, best contemporary dance performance). Over the past three years, she has given more than ten performances in theaters including the Musical Theater of Karelia, the Voronezh Chamber Theater, the Moscow Art Theater, the Bolshoi Theater, and GES-2