The Beersheba Municipal Conservatory

The Beersheba municipal conservatory — by its official name the Samuel Rubin Conservatory and Academy of Music — was founded in 1961

The story

The Beersheba municipal conservatory — by its official name the Samuel Rubin Conservatory and Academy of Music — was founded in 1961, after the mayor David Tuviyahu approached the teacher Ruth Hillman and asked that she establish in the city a school for music studies. Hillman, her partner Israel Hillman and ten more teachers founded it, and she directed it until 1983; Nissim Alsheikh, a partner in the founding and for many years the deputy director, replaced her until his retirement in 1993. At the beginning of its path the conservatory operated in huts in Neighborhood Alef. In its first year eighty pupils studied in it, and in the 1970s already more than a thousand. In 1970 its building at 10 Derekh Ha-Meshahrerim was dedicated, in the Brutalist style, designed by the architects Yaakov Rechter and Moshe Zarhy. The concert hall in it, named today after Ruth Hillman, served for decades as the home of the Israel Sinfonietta Beersheba, which was founded three years after the dedication of the building, and many of the orchestra's players taught here; in this hall almost all the central cultural events of the city were held. For many years the youth wind orchestra was the spearhead of the institution, and it appeared in concerts throughout the country and abroad. Here also developed the “Beersheba school of mandolin players”, among others by Simcha Nathanson, who founded the youth mandolin orchestra, directed it and conducted it; the flagship departments of the conservatory are to this day the mandolin and the accordion. Today all the musical instruments are studied in it, and also music theory, music literature, composition and improvisation. Six youth orchestras operate in it, it has a track for the matriculation examination in music and for a final project, and teaching begins with pre-instrumental classes for age five. Its large music library is housed in the neighboring municipal library. Among its graduates is the mandolin player Avi Avital.

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