Gil Shaham

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Gil Shaham (born February 19, 1971) is an award-winning violinist of Israeli descent. He was born in Urbana Illinois, during a short academic visit to the University of Illinois by his parents, both Israeli scientists - the astrophysicist Jacob Shaham^[1] and the cytogeneticist Meira Diskin. The family returned to Jerusalem when Gil Shaham was two. At age seven, Shaham began taking violin lessons from Samuel Bernstein at the Rubin Academy of Music in Jerusalem. In 1980, when Shaham was nine years old, he played for Isaac Stern, Nathan Milstein and Henryk Szeryng, and attended the Aspen Music School in Colorado, studying with Dorothy DeLay (the teacher of many other leading artists, including Itzhak Perlman) and Jens Ellerman.

Shaham is well known for having filled-in for various injured or unavailable virtuosi in many concerts. Notable replacements over the years include performing in the place of Itzhak Perlman, James Galway, Maxim Vengerov and Wynton Marsalis.

At age 10, Shaham debuted as soloist with the Jerusalem Symphony, conducted by the violinist Alexander Schneider. Less than a year later Shaham performed with Israel's foremost orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic, which was conducted by Zubin Mehta. At age 11, in 1982, Shaham won first prize in the Claremont Competition and was admitted to the Juilliard School in New York, where he studied with Dorothy DeLay and Hyo Kang. In addition, both he and his younger sister, the pianist Orli Shaham, attended Columbia University.

Shaham's career took off in 1989 when he was called to replace an ailing Itzhak Perlman for a series of concerts with Michael Tilson Thomas and the London Symphony Orchestra. Flying to London on a day's notice, he played both the Bruch and the Sibelius concertos to glowing reviews.

In 1990 he received the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant. In 1992 he was awarded the Premio Internazionale of the Accademia Chigiana in Siena

Shaham has established himself as a leading violin virtuoso. He has performed with many of the world's leading orchestras, among them the New York Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Russian National Orchestra, Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, and many others.

His recordings have won many awards, including the Grammy Award, Grand Prix du Disques, Cannes Classical Award, Ritmo Prize, and others. He has recorded more than 20 CDs on the Deutsche Grammophon label. He founded his own label, Canary, in association with Vanguard and his recordings for it have included a CD of Fauré, and a CD of Prokofiev with his sister Orli, with whom he has also recorded violin sonatas by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart for release in February 2008. He has recorded Beethoven's Triple Concerto and Septet with David Zinman, Truls Mørk and Yefim Bronfman for Arte Nova. Another recent releases features Shaham with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, playing the Butterfly Lovers' Concerto by Chen Gang and He Zhanhao, and the Concerto in D by Tchaikovsky, his second recording of the work. In 2000, he recorded the album Devil's Dance with pianist Jonathan Feldman.

Shaham plays a Stradivarius violin from the "long pattern" period, the "Comtesse de Polignac" of 1699. It was offered to Shaham on loan, in 1989, by the Stradivarius Society of Chicago (it belongs to a private collector).

Shaham is married to the noted Australian-born violinist Adele Anthony. They have two children, Elijah (born 2002) and Ella Mei (born 2005).