Janet Sung is an American classical violinist. Born in New York City, she began studying the violin at age 7 and debuted at the age of nine with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. She then studied privately with Josef Gingold for ten years. She received her B.A. from Harvard University, and then studied at the Juilliard School. [1]
Sung has performed as a soloist and with numerous orchestras and also teaches violin at the DePaul University School of Music in Chicago. [2]
Shulamit Ran is an Israeli-American composer. She moved from Israel to New York City at 14, as a scholarship student at the Mannes College of Music. Her Symphony (1990) won her the Pulitzer Prize for Music. In this regard, she was the second woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music, the first being Ellen Taaffe Zwilich in 1983. Ran was a professor of music composition at the University of Chicago from 1973 to 2015. She has performed as a pianist in Israel, Europe and the U.S., and her compositional works have been performed worldwide by a wide array of orchestras and chamber groups.
Joshua David Bell is an American violinist and conductor. He plays the Gibson Stradivarius.
Midori Goto, who performs under the mononym Midori, is a Japanese-born American violinist. She made her debut with the New York Philharmonic at age 11 as a surprise guest soloist at the New Year's Eve Gala in 1982. In 1986 her performance at the Tanglewood Music Festival with Leonard Bernstein conducting his own composition made the front-page headlines in The New York Times. Midori became a celebrated child prodigy, and one of the world's preeminent violinists as an adult.
Maxim Alexandrovich Vengerov is a Soviet-born Israeli violinist, violist, and conductor. Classic FM has called him "one of the greatest violinists in the world".
Hilary Hahn is an American violinist. A three-time Grammy Award winner, she has performed throughout the world as a soloist with leading orchestras and conductors, and as a recitalist. She is an avid supporter of contemporary classical music, and several composers have written works for her, including concerti by Edgar Meyer and Jennifer Higdon, partitas by Antón García Abril, two serenades for violin and orchestra by Einojuhani Rautavaara, and a violin and piano sonata by Lera Auerbach.
Theodore Thomas was a German-American violinist, conductor, and orchestrator of German birth. He is considered the first renowned American orchestral conductor and was the founder and first music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (1891–1905).
Dorothy DeLay was an American violin instructor, primarily at the Juilliard School, Sarah Lawrence College, and the University of Cincinnati.
Lera Auerbach is a Soviet-born Austrian-American classical composer, conductor and concert pianist.
Augusta Read Thomas is an American composer and professor.
Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg is an Italian and American classical violinist and teacher.
Anne Akiko Meyers is an American concert violinist. Meyers was the top-selling classical instrumentalist of 2014 on Billboard's traditional classical charts.
Ani Kavafian is a classical violinist and professor at the Yale School of Music.
Quartet San Francisco is a non-traditional and eclectic string quartet led by violinist Jeremy Cohen. The group played their first concert in 2001 and has recorded five albums. Playing a wide range of music genres including jazz, blues, tango, swing, funk, and pop, the group challenges the traditional classical music foundation of the string quartet.
Gwendolyn Masin is a Dutch-Irish violinist, author, and educator.
Clara-Jumi Kang is a South Korean-German classical violinist. She won the Indianapolis International Violin Competition in 2010 with five additional prizes. Korean newspaper Dong-A Times listed her among Korea's one hundred "most inspiring and influential people" in 2012. She was named the Kumho Musician of the Year in 2013.
Yoon Kwon is a South Korean-born American violinist and member of the first violins section of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra.
Audrey Call (1905–2001) was an American violinist and composer, writing for and soloing with studio orchestras for NBC and CBS in New York, Chicago, and Hollywood. One of very few women composers writing in a jazz style for the violin, she performed on the "Fibber McGee and Molly", "Dennis Day", "Imogene Coca", and Ronald Colman's Halls of Ivy radio shows.
Scott Yoo is an American conductor and violinist. He was appointed Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Mexico City Philharmonic Orchestra in 2016. He hosts the PBS TV series Now Hear This.
Diana Tishchenko is a German classical violinist of Ukrainian descent and the winner of the International Long Thibaud Crespin Competition in Paris 2018. Named “Rising Star” by the European Concert Hall Organisation (ECHO) in 2020, she has performed at the leading concert halls of Europe.
Janet Lorraine Thurlow was an American jazz singer.