Rami Bar-Niv's autobiography “Blood, Sweat and Tours - Notes from the Diary of a Concert Pianist”

Pianist/composer Rami Bar-Niv (Courtesy R.B-N)

Pianist and composer Rami Bar-Niv has spent the many years of his outstanding (and ongoing) professional life performing in North-, Central- and South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, New Zealand and Israel. He has performed as a soloist with orchestras, is a recitalist and chamber musician. Often sent abroad by the Foreign Ministry to represent Israel on the concert platform, he has become a goodwill ambassador for the country. Bar-Niv made history by being the first Israeli artist to perform in Egypt following the Begin-Sadat peace treaty. His recordings have met with great success and his compositions have been published, recorded and performed worldwide. Bar-Niv has engaged in educational activities worldwide, giving lectures, teaching private lessons and holding master classes and workshops. As of 2006, he has been running week-long piano camps for adults. His articles appear in music magazines and on Internet forums and groups. His first book “The Art of Piano Fingering: Traditional, Advanced and Innovative” (AndreA 1060) was published in 2012. His autobiography “Blood, Sweat and Tours - Notes from the Diary of a Concert Pianist” (AndreA 1070) came out in 2020. Today, Rami Bar-Niv and his American-born wife Andi live in Raanana, Israel.

 

Rami Bar-Niv was born in Tel Aviv in 1945. His parents immigrated to Israel before World War II, his mother from Poland and his father from Romania. Genia, his mother made her living as a piano teacher, giving him his first seven years of piano instruction; Aharon, his father, was a fine amateur violinist (as is Bar-Niv’s brother, Yair) and composer. The first section of the book deals with Bar-Niv’s childhood, his teenage years and studies in the USA. From 1969, he then dedicates a brief chapter to each year up to 2019. The book covers all major events and a myriad of other details of Bar-Niv’s life, as we are swept into accounts of his private- and professional life, travel for work and for pleasure and the many colleagues and friends he has collected on his way. A classical musician by training, Bar-Niv has also engaged in jazz and other popular genres of music, accompanying artists performing in many different styles. And Bar-Niv is a family man: the reader meets all immediate family members, reads of their joys, sorrows, also of the tragic death of Rami and Andi’s son Shai at age 15. Son Tal is a professional trumpeter. Daughter Sheli, also musical, decides to become a chef. The many photos add much to familiarizing the reader with the many, many people accompanying Bar-Niv on his rich and varied personal- and musical journey.

 

The prolific detail appearing in Bar-Niv’s memoirs may seem overdone to the general reader, but it will be much appreciated by his family, with information that will be especially interesting and relevant to the younger generations. Music lovers, potential- and professional musicians will, however, find interest in his discussion on management, piano practice, programming, performance and in Bar-Niv’s own compositions, a detailed list of which appears at the end of the book.  “Blood, Sweat and Tours - Notes from the Diary of a Concert Pianist” is readable and entertaining. Readers will enjoy Bar-Niv’s honesty and positive approach to people and life as well as his humour, as in accounts of a few unforeseen situations encountered by the artist, (probably not always as amusing at the time.) Although I feel the text should have undergone English editing, I found the book a good read and enjoyed its clear, pleasing format. It feels like time to revisit Rami Bar-Niv’s performances and compositions.