Gil Shaham

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Gil Shaham bigraphy, stories - Israeli musician

Gil Shaham : biography

19 February 1971 –

Gil Shaham (born February 19, 1971) is an Israeli-American violinist.

Awards

  • Avery Fisher Career Grant (1990)
  • Premio Internazionale of the Accademia Chigiana in Siena (1992)

Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance: Andre Previn & Gil Shaham for American Scenes (Works of Copland, Previn, Barber, Gershwin) (1999)

Avery Fisher Award (2008) Presented by his dear friend Gustavo Dudamel at a Live from Lincoln Center private presentation of the music of Pablo de Sarasate in the Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse.

Discography

  • Mendelssohn, Bruch: Violin Concertos (1990)
  • Schumann: Works for Violin and Piano (1990)
  • Franck/Saint-Saëns: Violin Sonatas (with Gerhard Oppitz) (1991)
  • Paganini: Concerto for Violin and Orchestra (1992)
  • Wieniawski: Violin Concertos Nos. 1 and 2 (1992)
  • Sibelius/Tchaikovsky: Violin Concertos (1993)
  • Barber: Concerto (1994)
  • Paganini for Two (with Goran Sollscher) (1994)
  • Vivaldi: The Four Seasons (with Orpheus Chamber Orchestra) (1995)
  • Prokofiev: Violin Concertos Nos. 1 and 2 (1996)
  • Violin Romances (with Orpheus Chamber Orchestra) (1996)
  • Dvořák for Two (with Orli Shaham) (1997)
  • The Fiddler of the Opera (with Jascha Heifetz) (1997)
  • Israel Philharmonic 60th Anniversary Gala Concert (1997)
  • Berlin Gala: A Salute to Carmen (with Anne Sofie von Otter and Roberto Alagna) (1998)
  • American Scenes (Works of Copland, Previn, Barber, Gershwin) (1998)
  • Glazunov/Kabalevsky: Meeting in Moscow (1998)
  • Bartok: Violin Concerto No. 2 (1999)
  • Pärt: Tabula Rasa (1999)
  • Devil’s Dance (2000)
  • Two Worlds (with Lee Ritenour and Dave Grusin) (2000)
  • John Williams: Treesong (2001)
  • Messiaen: Quartet for the End of Time (with Myung-Whun Chung) (2001)
  • Brahms: Violin Concerto in D Major (with Jian Wang) (2002)
  • Schubert for Two (with Goran Sollscher) (2003)
  • The Fauré Album (2003)
  • Prokofiev: Works for Violin and Piano (with Orli Shaham) (2004)
  • Beethoven: Triple Concerto/Septet (with David Zinman and Yefim Bronfman) (2006)
  • The Butterfly Lovers’ Concerto for Violin/Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto (2007)
  • Mozart in Paris (with Orli Shaham) (2008)
  • Elgar: Violin Concerto (2008)
  • Tchaikovsky: Piano Trio in A Minor (with Yefim Bronfman and Truls Mørk) (2008)
  • Sarasate: Virtuoso Violin Works (with Adele Anthony) (2009)
  • Haydn and Mendelssohn: Violin Concertos (with the Sejong Soloists) (2010)

Biography

Gil Shaham (Hebrew: גיל שחם) was born in Urbana, Illinois, while his parents, Israeli scientists, were on an academic fellowship at the University of Illinois. His father Jacob was an astrophysicist, and his mother, Meira Diskin, was a cytogeneticist. His sister is the pianist Orli Shaham. He is a graduate of the Horace Mann School in Riverdale, New York. The family returned to Jerusalem when Gil was two. At the age of 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, Pinchas Zukerman and Sarah Chang) and Jens Ellerman.

Shaham is married to the Australian-born violinist Adele Anthony. They have three children, Elijah, Ella Mei and Simon.

Music career

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 upon to replace an ailing Itzhak Perlman for a series of concerts with Michael Tilson Thomas and the London Symphony Orchestra. Taking time out from his studies at the Horace Mann School (where he was a senior), he flew to London at short notice, then performed the Bruch and Sibelius violin concertos, for which he garnered glowing reviews.

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

Shaham has performed with many of the world’s leading orchestras, among them the New York Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Vienna Philharmonic, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Russian National Orchestra, Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and Philadelphia Orchestra.

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.