If it wasn’t for pre-teen hormones, Amit Peled may have never found the cello.
While growing up in an Israeli kibbutz, all the children, including 10-year-old Peled, were required to choose a musical instrument to practice. Peled had no real penchant for music, but was smitten with an older girl who played the cello.
“I didn't even know the name of the instrument, but I saw that was what she's playing,” Peled admitted, chuckling. “I didn’t dare to talk to this girl, but I figured if I started playing the same thing she played… Well, she would have to marry me.”
Unfortunately, Peled’s logic was unsound. The girl never gave him so much as a soft word. But it was too late. Young Amit was stuck playing the cello.
But his prepubescent pining paid off in unexpected ways. Today Amit Peled is one of the world’s most renowned cellists. He’s performed everywhere from Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall in New York City to D.C.’s Kennedy Center, Wigmore Hall in London, the Konzerthaus in Berlin and Salle Gaveau in Paris. Since 2003, Peled has also taught at the acclaimed Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University.
A teenage Amit Peled practices the cello in Israel.
Raised in Heaven
Growing up in a kibbutz was a unique experience. These traditional Jewish communities, based on shared living and agricultural subsistence, “are basically communism,” Peled joked. In his kibbutz, all 500-some-odd households earned the same wages, regardless of their profession. Peled’s father was a truck driver, for example, and his friend’s father was a lawyer, but both families received an identical allowance. “I got clothes from the kibbutz, food from the kibbutz,” Peled said. “Everything was free.”
For Peled and his three sisters, he said growing up in a kibbutz “was like heaven,” particularly due to the quality of the education, and the opportunities to pursue extracurriculars like music. If he had grown up in any other nation, with a truck driver father, he never would have had the same opportunities to pursue music.
However, Peled noted that the system “doesn’t really work” and has “many bad aspects,” remarking that it can’t sustain itself in the long run, just like the communist experiment in the USSR or elsewhere. Today, most of Israel’s kibbutzim have become privatized. “If somebody works 16 or 18 hours a day, and then somebody doesn't work at all, and they get the same, well eventually that system falls apart,” Peled said.
Peled was something of a basketball star in his youth, and for much of his teenage years, his aptitude with the cello and the ball ran in competition to each other. In high school, his basketball coach and his cello teacher put their heads together and decided that Peled had to pick a side. “I just didn’t have enough time to practice cello four hours a day and go to basketball practice and games,” Peled said.
Peled recalls sitting in his bedroom, stressing over the decision. Although he loved basketball, he chose to stick with the cello. Ironically, he made the call because he didn’t think he was tall enough to be a professional player. (Today he is 6’5”.)
“But deep inside, there was no question that I would ever stop playing the cello,” Peled admitted. “I loved it too much.”
A younger Peled, shown here with his cello outside a cattle farm.
Planting a Seed
At age 18, Peled, like all Israeli citizens, was required to perform two years of military service in the Israeli Defense Force. Luckily for him, his skills with the cello meant he was able to join a special military string quartet and avoid regular service. “I played concerts for soldiers, for the Prime Minister, for the President, you name it.”
The day he finished his three years of service Peled left Israel, attending Yale University on a full scholarship, then the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. Aged 28, he accepted an offer to begin teaching at Johns Hopkins Peabody Institute, becoming one of the youngest professors ever hired by a major conservatory. “In the beginning, I was younger than some of my students,” he joked, “but they stay young and I get old.”
Although Peled has performed around the world, both as a soloist and a chamber musician, and released dozens of recordings, it’s clear when you speak with him that his ultimate passion is teaching. This is why, perhaps, he’s kept his role at the Peabody Institute for over two decades. “I love gardening, and teaching is very similar,” he said. “Particularly in music, because you teach one-on-one, not a 200-person lecture.”
He likes the process of education to gardening, and often uses the metaphor “planting seeds” to describe how he instills knowledge and understanding in his students. “You get into your student’s system, into their heart, into their nerves. You get to make a change in their life.” For Peled, music is about the future and the past, planting seeds harvested from the trees of the past to grow the next generation of artists. “You cannot forget tradition,” he said. “After all, we are dealing with 400 years of music.”
(Peled knows a thing or two about tradition. For six years, he toured, performed, and recorded with the 1733 cello of Pablo Casals, widely considered the finest cellist of the 20th century.)
One of Peled’s trademark initiatives is something he calls the CelloGang. This “gang” is composed of Peled and a revolving roster of his students. Each year he takes them on the road with him, traveling and performing, and even makes a point to pay them a salary, just like any other professional musician. The CelloGang isn’t just about performing, but about showing students firsthand what it takes to be a professional musician beyond pure skill, such as “being on time, getting paid, being prepared, catching a flight, all of that stuff,” Peled said. “They get to witness what it means to play cello outside of the classroom.”
More than anything else, though, Peled says the Cello Gang is about keeping a level playing field with his students, giving them confidence in their own abilities. “If you have a mentor, and all of a sudden the mentor becomes equal to you and you make music together, it’s incredibly motivating. You absolutely cannot ‘teach’ that experience in a classroom.”
Peled and his Cello Gang don’t just prioritize esteemed concert venues, though. He aims for his outfit to make a difference in the community, and they routinely perform at food pantries, underprivileged schools, community centers, and hospitals. These initiatives are as much about doing good work as they are teaching his students the myriad ways a musician can make a positive impact. “There’s more to aim for than just playing in Carnegie Hall,” he said. “I want my students to understand that, and experience it firsthand.”
Amit Peled poses with his cello.
Your Body is Your Strad
Though he hung up his basketball jersey in high school to focus on the cello, the game is still a big part of Peled’s life. He’s a die-hard Lebron James fan, and for most of May and June each year, he declines all concert opportunities to focus on watching the NBA playoffs. Peled and his sons (ages 17 and 14) have flown all over the United States to see “King James” play. Peled even wrote letters to him, hoping to play for James or work with his nonprofit the I PROMISE SCHOOL, which uplifts underprivileged youth in James’ hometown of Akron, Ohio. (He has yet to get a response.)
Peled’s continued passion for athletics is perhaps part of the reason he’s drawn to Coregami apparel. “It connects my two worlds,” he said. “When I wear Coregami, I don't feel like I’m on a concert stage. I feel like I'm in the gym playing basketball. Coregami found a way to make one feel comfortable, but still look dignified.”
Peled said that although he “hates” the discomfort and pretension of “tails and jackets and all that crap,” the benefits of comfort are more than just physical. “Comfort, breathing, flexibility, all of this is key to playing well,” he said. “I like to say your body is your Stradivarius, not your instrument. If your Strad—your body—feels good, you will sound good.”
“When you play [classical] music, it’s like stepping into a museum,” he added. “That’s a wonderful thing, but it doesn’t mean you have to dress like it’s 200 years ago.”
Much of what Peled believes in seems to have a genesis in his childhood, growing up in the communal society of a kibbutz. Like his work with CelloGang, he speaks often of giving back, of using music to serve the community first, the individual second.
When Peled performed with Pablo Casals’s cello, he attempted not only to perform like the master, but to emulate the community work he did, as well. “Casals was the ‘Beatles’ of his time,” said Peled. “But he wasn’t above the crowd. He would go and play these concerts, and he’d stay for an hour or more after the show and talk to every single member of the audience. Musicians like that, they played for the people.”
He continued, “People blame the audience for not coming to classic classical music, but I think if we do a better job as performers, younger people will come.”
Peled makes a point to connect with the audiences during his performances, about topics beyond music, such as the NBA playoffs or draft. “When I go to kids and I talk to them about basketball players, about the draft coming up on Wednesday, they see I'm no different than them,” Peled said. “They relate to you, and then classical music can become just as exciting as Taylor Swift or Travis Scott. Why not?”
Music is the Only God
Peled, who speaks fluent Hebrew, believes performing classical music is akin to communicating in a foreign language. To hear him tell it, it’s less about telling a story than about conveying a feeling “I call it gibberish,” he said. “You have to convey an emotion in words that people don't understand.”
The way one does this, Peled believes, is quite similar to stage acting. A good musician gets in character, placing themself in the role. “If I'm a good actor, and I can give you a monologue in Hebrew,” Peled explained, “and you may not know exactly what I was talking about, but you would have a feeling, you could understand—and more importantly relate to—the emotions at play.”
Since his childhood in Israel, Peled has not attended synagogue, and no longer considers himself a practicing Jew. “Honestly, I don't believe in any God,” Peled admitted. “I believe in the superpower of nature.”
Still, his Jewish heritage is an important part of his identity. All three of his children attend a Jewish day school, his family celebrates the traditional Jewish holidays, and they speak Hebrew at home.
One of the programs Peled regularly performs is a one-man show called “The Journey with my Jewishness.” The program is a mixture of talking and performing, with Peled connecting pieces of music to his identity and upbringing in Israel.
“The conclusion of the concert is me realizing my religion is music,” Peled explained. “The same way people practice Judaism or Christianity or Islam… That's how I practice music. I'm fanatical about it. I do rigorous daily work on it. The joy that comes from it is the same joy people get from believing in God.”
“If you listen, music can give you the answer to everything.”
