Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Music

Former Table Tennis National Champion, Maccabiah Games Competitor to Appear in New York Philharmonic

Michael Landers, a former national table tennis champion who competed in 2013’s Maccabiah Games, is set to appear in his New York Philharmonic debut on February 20, in Andy Akiho’s concerto “Ricochet.”

While the New York Times reports that Landers has perfect pitch and a fondness for bassoon, it his table tennis prowess that will be on display. He and fellow former table tennis champion Ariel Hsing will rally on a ping pong table elevated over the rest of the Philharmonic, where they will use a series of makeshift paddles — including wine glasses and drums of various sizes — to turn their strokes into a rhythm section.

The piece will appear as part of a program of music from China meant to celebrate the Lunar New Year. Ping Pong is China’s most popular recreational sport.

You can check out Landers’ playing in the Times’ video here.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.