Gil Shaham is one of the foremost violinists of our time; his flawless technique, combined with inimitable warmth and generosity of spirit, has solidified his renown as an American master. The Grammy Award winner and Musical America’s “Instrumentalist of the Year” is sought after worldwide for concerto appearances with leading orchestras and conductors and regularly gives recitals and appears with ensembles on the world’s great concert stages and at its most prestigious festivals.

Highlights of recent years include the acclaimed recording and performances of J.S. Bach’s complete sonatas and partitas for solo violin. In the coming seasons, in addition to championing these solo works, he will join his long-time duo partner, pianist Akira Eguchi, in recitals throughout North America, Europe and Asia.

Shaham regularly appears with the Berlin Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Israel Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris and San Francisco Symphony, and he has engaged in multi-year residencies with the orchestras of Montreal, Stuttgart and Singapore. He has maintained a particular focus on violin concertos of the 1930s — including works by Barber, Bartók, Berg, Korngold and Prokofiev — and, in recent years, he has premiered new commissions by Avner Dorman, Reena Esmail and Mason Bates. 

For his more than two dozen concerto and solo recordings, Shaham has earned multiple Grammy Awards, as well as a Grand Prix du Disque, Diapason d’Or and Gramophone Editor’s Choice. Many of these recordings appear on Canary Classics, the label he founded in 2004. Highlights include Virtuoso Violin Works, Elgar’s Violin Concerto, Hebrew Melodies and The Butterfly Lovers. His 2016 recording, 1930s Violin Concertos Vol. 2, including Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto and Bartók’s Violin Concerto No. 2, was nominated for a Grammy and his recording of the Beethoven and Brahms concertos with The Knights, released in 2021, was also Grammy-nominated.

Shaham was born in Champaign-Urbana, Ill., in 1971. He moved with his parents to Israel, where he began violin studies with Samuel Bernstein of the Rubin Academy of Music at the age of 7, receiving annual scholarships from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation. In 1981, he made debuts with the Jerusalem Symphony and the Israel Philharmonic and, the following year, took the first prize in Israel’s Claremont Competition. He then became a scholarship student at Juilliard, and also studied at Columbia University.

Gil Shaham was awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 1990 and received the coveted Avery Fisher Prize in 2008. In 2012, he was named “Instrumentalist of the Year” by Musical America. He plays the 1699 “Countess Polignac” Stradivarius and performs on an Antonio Stradivari violin, Cremona c. 1719, with the assistance of Rare Violins “In Consortium,” Artists and Benefactors Collaborative. He lives in New York City with his wife, violinist Adele Anthony, and their three children.