Not many people know what they will do in life from a young age. Nir Sarosi of Afola actually knew. He felt the connection to the violin and its sound from a young age. Nir, the second of four, all grew up in Afula, all received musical education at home, but he is the only one who took playing a few steps further and turned it into a career. “I started learning to play the violin at the age of 9. I immediately realized that this was my vocation,” he says: “Right from the first touch with the instrument, right from the first moment I was excited by the sounds produced by it and I realized that it is possible to express high emotional intensities through it.”
Sarosi grew up as a religious boy who studied at the beginning of the road at the municipal conservatory and then at the high school for arts and sciences in Afula in order to put more emphasis on music and his future musical career. At the end of military service in a combat unit, music burned in his fingers and he hurried to enroll in studies at the Music Academy in Jerusalem. “I had a classical training,” Sarousi recalls at the beginning of his career: “Studies brought me together with people who directed me to new worlds of world music, Balkan, gypsy and klezmer music” he recalls.
Towards the end of his studies at the academy, he began to perform in concerts and television programs, and from there, in 2003, he joined the band “Habrira Ha’elvi’at” of the musician Shlomo Bar. Sarosi did not stop and performed alongside leading artists such as Omer Adam, Amir Benyon, Shuli Rand and these days in a joint show with the musician and comedian Nancy Brands. At the same time he developed a solo career with his band and together they appear at festivals around the world.
Nir, 44, married and father of four children, grew up in Afula, and his parents still live in the city today. Today he lives in the moshav “Nachosha” in Emek Elah where he also established his home studio where he records national artists from Israel and abroad, arranges and teaches.
“The violin is a part of me, literally an organ of my body. Music is the soundtrack of my life and playing the violin is their soul. Over the years I have performed in front of the world, on large stages and in front of thousands of people and also at parties in my children’s gardens and on the grass in front of the neighbors. Every event and every situation is for me An opportunity to play and move the audience through it.”
• Connected to gypsy music
These days Nir is performing in an immersive musical show “The Strings of Fire”. The show is a musical journey around the world – a Mediterranean fusion seasoned with gypsy folk music, classics, musicals and other beloved and well-known pieces from around the world. This is an exciting virtuoso performance accompanied by musicians. “I am very connected to gypsy music and am inspired by various musicians, among them the violinists Ruby Laktosz from Hungary and Samvel Yarbinyan from Armenia. The beauty in my view is knowing how to play any style in the correct and exact nature of the source from which the music came,” he explains.
About two months ago, he returned to perform in Afula, his hometown, as part of a show held by the “Natural Selection” band at the Culture Hall: “It was very exciting to return to the same stage on which I performed as a child during ceremonies and municipal events of the school and the city,” Sarosi said about his personal coming of age and added: “These days I’m performing around the country in an exciting show called “The Strings of Fire” and I’m looking forward to performing in front of my home audience, in Afula.”