Gil Shaham [b. 1971], a classical violinist, was born in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, to Israeli husband-and-wife scientists who were working at the time at the University of Illinois. He returned with them to Israel when he was two, and five years later began violin lessons at Jerusalem’s Rubin Academy of Music. At age nine he played for several professional violinists, Isaac Stern among them, and a year later made his professional debut as a soloist with the Jerusalem Symphony.
In 1982, when he was 11, Shaham won the Claremont Competition and used that prize to help secure a scholarship to the Juilliard School; he is one of the youngest students to attend that institution. Along with his sister, the pianist Orli Shaham, Gil also attended classes at Columbia University. At the age of 19 he was awarded the Avery Fisher Career Grant.
Shaham’s solo career has included appearances with most of the world’s top orchestras. This list includes the New York, Israel, Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics, the Boston, Chicago, San Francisco and Toronto Symphony Orchestras, and the Russian National Orchestra. His list of recordings is broad and extensive, including many of the most popular violin concertos—by Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn, Brahms and Bruch—but also a number of lesser known pieces which have become more popular thanks to his stewardship. These include Violin Concertos No. 1 and No. 2 by Polish composer Henryk Wieniawski, violin concertos by Edward Elgar, Bela Bartok and Samuel Barber, and chamber pieces by Messiaen, Prokofiev, Franck, and Estonian composer Arvo Pärt.
Shaham is a multiple Grammy Award winner and has also received acknowledgements for excellence in classical recording from Gramophone and in winning the Grand Prix du Disc. In 2007 he formed his own record label, Canary Classics, for which he has recorded five CDs thus far. These include Mozart’s Six Sonatas (Op. 1) with Orli Shaham on piano, and the Tchaikovsky Piano Trio in A minor (Op. 50) with Truls Mørk on cello and Yefim Bronfman on piano. Shaham’s instrument is the 1699 “Comtesse de Polignac” Stradivarius, on loan to him by the Stradivarius Society of Chicago.
Shaham performs the final part of Carmen Fantasy by Pablo de Sarasate (Berlin Philharmonic; Claudio Abbado, conductor):
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