- Joshua Bell
Joshua Bell (born 9 December 1967) is an American Grammy Award-winning violinist.
- Itzhak Perlman
Perlman began his music career at the Academy of Music in Tel-Aviv, Israel. In 1958, at the age of 13, Itzhak Perlman won an Israeli talent competition. This win made it possible for Perlman to travel to the United States to tour and appear on television. He then stayed in the U.S. and continued his musical training at the Juilliard School in New York City. In 1964, Perlman won a contest among young musicians known as the Leventritt Competition.
- Nigel Kennedy
Nigel Kennedy (born December 28, 1956 in Brighton, England) is a violinist and violist. He was a pupil at the Yehudi Menuhin School, under Yehudi Menuhin himself, and later at the Juilliard School in New York under Dorothy DeLay. He is most famous for his recordings of Antonio Vivaldi's The Four Seasons. For a time he preferred to be known by just his surname "Kennedy".
- Yehudi Menuhin
Yehudi Menuhin, Baron Menuhin of Stoke d'Abernon, OM, KBE (April 22, 1916 – March 12, 1999) was an American violinist and conductor who spent most of his performing career in the United Kingdom. Though born in New York City, New York, he would later become a citizen of Switzerland in 1970, and in 1985, Great Britain.
- Hilary Hahn
Hilary Hahn is an American Grammy Award–winning violinist
- Isaac Stern
Isaac Stern was one of the finest violin virtuosi of the twentieth century. Born in Kremenetz, Ukraine on July 21, 1920, Isaac Stern was ten months old when his family moved to San Francisco. He received his first music lessons from his mother before enrolling at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in 1928. He studied there until 1931, then studied privately with Louis Persinger.
- Jascha Heifetz
Jascha Heifetz (December 10, 1987) was a Lithuanian-born American violin virtuoso.
- Fritz Kreisler
Fritz Kreisler was an Austrian (later American) violinist and composer, one of the most famous violinists of his day. Kreisler was noted for his uniquely sweet tone, and also for his expressive phrasing. He produced a characteristic sound, which was immediately recognizable as his own. His tone and phrasing were associated with the "gemütlich" lifestyle of pre-war Vienna.
- Antonio Vivaldi
Antonio Lucio Vivaldi, nicknamed "Il Prete Rosso" ("The Red Priest"), was an Italian priest and baroque music composer, as well as a famous violinist; he was born and raised in the Republic of Venice. "The Four Seasons", a series of four violin concertos, are his best known works and highly popular Baroque music pieces.
- Pinchas Zukerman
Pinchas Zukerman is a noted Israeli violinist, violist, and conductor who was appointed Music Director of Canada's National Arts Centre Orchestra in April 1998. Zukerman was born in Tel Aviv. He left for the United States and studied at the Juilliard School. He made his New York début in 1963. From 1980 to 1987 he was the director of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra in Minnesota. He married actress Tuesday Weld in 1985 but they divorced in 1998.
- Leila Josefowicz
Leila Bronia Josefowicz (born October 20, 1977 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada) is a classical violinist. Born into a Polish-English family, while a young child her family moved to Los Angeles, California where she started studying violin at the age of three and a half using the Suzuki method. Her father, physicist Jack Josefowicz, learned with her until "out of the mouths of babes" she told him that he wasn't very good. At five, she started formal lessons with Idel Low.
- Anne-Sophie Mutter
Anne-Sophie Mutter (born June 29, 1963 in Rheinfelden, Germany) is a German virtuoso violinist
- Sarah Chang
Sarah Chang (born December 10, 1980) is a Korean American violinist with Korean nationality. Chang was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania of Korean heritage. She asked her parents for a violin at the age of 3 and auditioned for the Juilliard School at 6 playing the Bruch Violin Concerto. She was admitted into the studio of Dorothy DeLay, violin teacher to some of the world's great violinists including Itzhak Perlman, Midori Goto, Gil Shaham, Shlomo Mintz and many others, …
- Nicola Benedetti
Nicola Benedetti (born July 1987 West Kilbride, North Ayrshire) is a Scottish violinist.
- Rachel Barton Pine
Rachel Barton Pine (born October 11, 1974) is a violinist from Chicago. Considered a child prodigy at the violin, she started playing at the age of 3 and a half. She played at many renowned venues through her child and teen years. She currently resides in Chicago with her husband Greg, plays regularly with the Chicago Symphony and on her own, tours worldwide, and has an active recording career.
- Gil Shaham
Gil Shaham (born February 19, 1971) is an award-winning violinist of Israeli descent. Born in Urbana, Illinois, he moved to Israel at the age of 2 with his parents, both scientists, Jacob Shaham and Meira Diskin. At age 10, he made debuts with the Jerusalem Symphony and Israel Philharmonic orchestras, and was admitted to Juilliard, where he studied with the famed Dorothy DeLay and Hyo Kang. Both he and his sister, the pianist Orli Shaham, attended Columbia University.
- Tasmin Little
Tasmin Little (born 13 May 1965) is an English violinist. She was born in London, where she studied under Pauline Scott at the Yehudi Menuhin School and later at the Guildhall School of Music. She came to prominence when she was a string section finalist in the "BBC Young Musician of the Year" competition in 1982. Her father is George Little, the English TV actor. In 1988 she made her professional solo debut with the Halle Orchestra.
- Dorothy Delay
Dorothy DeLay was an American violin instructor at the Juilliard School. Born in Medicine Lodge, Kansas, her pedagogy is considered revolutionary, and she is generally regarded as the most influential American violin teacher of the late 20th century.
- Michael Rabin
Michael Rabin (May 2 1936 - January 19 1972) was an American violin virtuoso. He studied under Ivan Galamian at Juilliard, who regarded Rabin as having an extraordinary talent: "no weaknesses, never". He was a musician of excellent pedigree, with a New York Philharmonic violinist for a father and a Juilliard-trained and relatively successful pianist for a mother. He started his study with Galamian from a young age, …
- Gidon Kremer
Gidon Kremer (born February 27, 1947) is a Latvian violinist and conductor. Kremer was born in Riga to parents of German-Jewish origin, his father being a Holocaust survivor. He began to play the violin at the age of four, receiving tuition from his father and his grandfather, who were both professional violinists. He went on to study at the Riga School of Music and with David Oistrakh at the Moscow Conservatory.
- André Rieu
André Rieu is a Dutch violinist and conductor. He is famous for creating an international revival in waltz music and for his many top selling recordings with his "Johann Strauss Orchestra."
- Maxim Vengerov
Maxim Vengerov (born August 20, 1974 in Novosibirsk) is a Russian violinist virtuoso of Jewish origin. Vengerov was five when he received his first violin lessons from Galina Turtschaninova and later at the Royal Academy of Music in London (Junior Department). He later studied with the legendary violin teacher Zakhar Bron and was still only ten when he won the Junior Wieniawski Competition in Poland. Recital engagements in Moscow and Leningrad (St.Petersburg) followed, …
- David Oistrakh
David Fyodorovich Oistrakh was a Jewish Soviet violinist who made many recordings and was the dedicatee of numerous violin works. His recordings and performances of Shostakovich's concerti are particularly well known, but he was also a performer of classical concerti. He worked with orchestras in Russia, and also with musicians in Europe and the United States.
- Pablo de Sarasate
Pablo Martín Melitón de Sarasate y Navascués, was a Spanish violin virtuoso and composer of the Romantic period. Pablo Sarasate was born in Pamplona, Spain, the son of an artillery bandmaster. He began studying the violin with his father at the age of five and later took lessons from a local teacher but his musical talent became evident early on and he appeared in his first public concert in La Coruña at the age of eight.
- Niccolò Paganini
Niccolò (or Nicolò) Paganini was an Italian violinist, violist, guitarist, and composer. He is one of the most famous violin virtuosi, and is considered one of the greatest violinists who ever lived, with perfect intonation and innovative techniques. Although nineteenth century Europe had seen several extraordinary violinists, …
- Zakhar Bron
Zakhar Bron is a Russian violinist and violin teacher. His students have included Maxim Vengerov, Vadim Repin, Before he was well-known he taught privately in Novosibirsk; since then he has taught at the Royal Academy of Music in London, the Conservatory of Rotterdam, the Musikhochschule Lübeck and the Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofía in Madrid. In 1997 he took up a position at the Cologne Musikhochschule.
- Neville Marriner
Sir Neville Marriner (born April 15, 1924) is an English conductor and violinist. Marriner was born in Lincoln and studied at the Royal College of Music and the Paris Conservatoire. He played the violin in the Philharmonia and London Symphony Orchestra and formed the Jacobean Ensemble with Thurston Dart before going to Hancock, Maine, in the United States to study conducting with Pierre Monteux at his school there. In 1959 he founded the Academy of St.
- Nathan Milstein
Nathan Mironovich Milstein was a Ukrainian-born violinist who took United States citizenship in 1942 after spending much of his life there. He was born in Odessa. As a child, he was forced by his mother to take violin lessons to keep him out of mischief and studied with Piotr Stolyarsky (also David Oistrakh's teacher). When he was 11, Leopold Auer invited him to become one of his students at the St. Petersburg Conservatory.
- Joseph Joachim
Joseph Joachim (June 28, 1831 - August 15, 1907) (pronounced YO-a-chim) was a Hungarian violinist, conductor, composer and teacher. He is regarded as one of the most influential violinists of all time.
- Mischa Elman
Mischa Elman (January 20, 1891 - April 5, 1967) was a Ukrainian-born violinist, famed for his passionate style and the beauty of his tone. He was born in the small jewish town of Talnoye in the province of Kiev. His grandfather was a klezmer, a Jewish folk musician, who also played the violin. It became apparent when Mischa was very young that he had perfect pitch, but his father hesitated about a career as a musician, since musicians were not very high on the social scale.
- Henryk Wieniawski
Henryk Wieniawski was a Polish composer and violinist. He was born into a Polish-Jewish family, whose father, Tobiasz Pietruszka, converted to Catholicism. His talent for playing the violin was recognized early on, and in 1843 he entered the Paris Conservatoire. After graduation, Wieniawski toured extensively, giving many recitals on which he was often accompanied by his brother Józef on piano. In 1847 Henryk Wieniawski published his first opus, …
- Lara St. John
Lara St. John (born on April 15, 1971 in London, Ontario, Canada) is a Canadian violinist of Scottish origin.
- Leopold Auer
Leopold Auer, (June 7, 1845 - July 15, 1930) was a Hungarian violinist, teacher, conductor and composer. Auer was born in Veszprém to a Jewish family, but became a Christian later in life. He first studied violin with a local concertmaster. He later continued his studies with Ridley Kohné in Budapest, Jacques Dont in Vienna and finally Joseph Joachim in Hanover. He settled in St. Petersburg and taught at the conservatoire there from 1868 to 1917, …
- Jacques Thibaud
Jacques Thibaud (September 27, 1880 - September 1, 1953) was a French violinist. Thibaud was born in Bordeaux and studied the violin first with his father before entering the Paris Conservatoire at the age of thirteen. In 1896 he jointly won the conservatoire's violin prize with Pierre Monteux (who later became a famous conductor). He was injured while fighting in World War I, after which he had to rebuild his technique.
- Eugene Fodor
Eugene Fodor (born March 5, 1950 in Turkey Creek, Colorado) is an American violin virtuoso. Fodor's first ten years of study were with Harold Wippler. He then studied at the Juilliard School of Music in New York City, Indiana University and the University of Southern California, where his teachers included Ivan Galamian, Josef Gingold and Jascha Heifetz, respectively. Fodor made his solo debut with the Denver Symphony at the age of ten, …
- Janine Jansen
Janine Jansen (born in Utrecht, 1978) is a Dutch violinist. Her father and brother are also musicians. She began to study the violin at age 6. She studied with Coosje Wijzenbeek, Philipp Hirshhorn, and Boris Belkin. Jansen appeared as soloist with the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland in 2001, where she performed the Brahms Violin Concerto. She opened the BBC Proms in 2005.
- Julia Fischer
Julia Fischer (born 15 june 1983) is a German violinist.
- Peter Oundjian
Peter Oundjian is a violinist and conductor, the youngest of five children from an Armenian father and English mother. He was educated in England, where he began studying the violin at age seven with Manoug Parikian. He then attended the Royal College of Music. He went to New York to study at the Juilliard School with Ivan Galamian, Itzhak Perlman, and Dorothy Delay. In 1980, he won First Prize at the International Violin Competition in Viña del Mar, Chile.
- James Ehnes
James Ehnes (born January 27, 1976 in Brandon, Manitoba) is a Canadian concert violinist. The son of Alan Ehnes, a trumpeter and music teacher, James Ehnes began playing violin by the age of five. He won numerous competitions in Canada as a teen and in 2001, he won the Juno Award for Best Classical Album. In January 2002 Ehnes was named Young Artist of the Year at the Cannes Classical Awards in Cannes, France.
- Ruggiero Ricci
Ruggiero Ricci is an Italian-American violin virtuoso who has become famous in particular for his performances and recordings of the works of Paganini. He is the son of Italian immigrants. His father first taught him to play the violin. At age seven, Ricci studied with Louis Persinger and Elizabeth Lackey. Persinger would become his piano accompanist for many recitals and recordings.