Gil Shaham

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

Shaham's career improved, 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, then performed the Bruch and Sibelius violin concertos.

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.

In 1981, Gil Shaham debuted with the Jerusalem Symphony and the Israel Philharmonic while he was studying with Haim Taub. Later that year, he attended Aspen Music School in Colorado, studying with Dorothy DeLay and Jens Ellermann. Later in 1982 after taking first place in Israel's Claremont Competition, he became a scholarship student at Juilliard. He has also studied at Columbia University.

Gil Shaham (Hebrew: גיל שחם; born February 19, 1971) is an American violinist of Israeli Jewish descent.

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.