Giora Bernstein (born 1933) is a conductor, classical violinist, and Professor Emeritus of Music at the University of Colorado.
[2] In 1955, he went to the United States, where he studied violin with Edouard Dethier at the Juilliard School,[3] and later received a Master of Fine Arts in composition from Brandeis University.
Under his directorship the festival was the venue for several world and North American premieres, and won five ASCAP Adventurous Programming Awards.
New works were a feature of his programming at both the Claremont Music Festival which originally commissioned Paul Chihara's Grass,[6] and the Colorado Music Festival, where both Tōru Takemitsu's Dreamtime and Krzysztof Penderecki's Concerto for viola and orchestra received their North American premieres.
Since his retirement, Giora Bernstein has been based in Vienna, where he plays violin in chamber concerts, although he has periodically returned to the Colorado Music Festival as a guest conductor.