The School of Music at Florida International University invites you to attend Crossing Boundaries, a lecture series comprised of distinguished scholars and outstanding people in the arts discussing their experience and relationship with music. Professor Emeritus of Law at Harvard University, Alan Dershowitz, and members of the Amernet String Quartet, FIU’s Ensemble-in-Residence, explore how the cultural landscape and history of the state of Israel are deeply entwined with the successive waves of migration that created its artistic identity. Through conversation, discussion, and performance, they will take patrons on a travelogue from the dusty streets of old Tel Aviv in the 1930’s through the modern country we know today.

$5 Members, $10 Non-Members, FIU Students Free

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Guest Speaker: Alan Dershowitz

Attorney and longtime Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz has been involved in some of the most controversial trials of his day.

Born on September 1, 1938, in Brooklyn, New York, Alan Dershowitz became a famed attorney and Ivy League scholar known for his emphasis on civil liberties. A prolific author, he also became involved in some of the most highly publicized trials of his time, including the infamous O.J. Simpson murder trial in 1995. Dershowitz has continued to garner major media attention for his speeches, writings and courtroom appearances.Alan Morton Dershowitz was born on September 1, 1938, in Brooklyn, New York. Though initially not regarded as a stellar student by some of his teachers and peers, he would go on to become one of the leading figures of his field. After finishing Yeshiva University High School, Dershowitz was a student at Brooklyn College, where he thrived, graduating in 1959. He attended Yale Law School, where he graduated first in his class, and then clerked for Supreme Court Justice Arthur J. Goldberg. Returning to academia, Dershowitz became the youngest scholar to become a full professor at Harvard Law, doing so at 28 years old.

He is a prolific author as well, having penned books such as The Best Defense (1982), Chutzpah (1991), The Advocate’s Devil (1994), Supreme Injustice: How the High Court Hijacked Election 2000 (2001), The Case for Israel(2003) and Taking a Stand: My Life in the Law (2013).

Guest Speaker: Amernet String Quartet

The Amernet String Quartet (Misha Vitenson and Franz Felkl, violins, Michael Klotz, viola, and Jason Calloway, cello) has garnered recognition as one of today’s exceptional string quartets and are Ensemble-in-Residence at Herbert and Nicole Wertheim School of Music & Performing Arts in Miami.  Their sound has been called “complex” but with an “old world flavor.” Strad Magazine described the Amernet as “…a group of exceptional technical ability.”  The Amernet’s performance schedule has taken the quartet across the Americas and to Asia, Europe, and the Middle East and they have collaborated with many of today’s most prominent artists and ensembles including the Tokyo and Ying quartets as well as Shmuel Ashkenasi, Robert deMaine, Roberto Diaz, Alexander Fiterstein, Gary Hoffman, Anthony McGill, Sherrill Milnes, and Michael Tree.

Internationally, the quartet has appeared at major festivals around the world, including Cervantino, San Miguel de Allende, Aviv (Israel), and Colima (Mexico), while the Nürnberger Nachrichten commented that their playing was “fascinating, with flawless intonation, extraordinary beauty of sound, virtuosic brilliance, and homogeneity of ensemble.”  The Amernet’s U.S. engagements have included the Kennedy Center, the Tilles Center, Caramoor, the Great Lakes Festival, Newport, Friends of Chamber Music in Arizona and in Syracuse, LPR in New York City, Chamber Music Society of Louisville, Music on the Edge in Pittsburgh, the University of Maine – Collins Center, and Market Square Concerts. READ MORE