Gil Shaham in an interview

"In many ways, music is both life and love."

Gil Shaham is a soloist with all the major orchestras and conductors of our time. He performs in Berlin and Munich, Brussels and Vienna, New York, London, Chicago, Hamburg, Zurich, Paris, Boston, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. His CD recordings have received top awards – the Grammy, the Grand Prix du Disque, the Diapason d'Or, and Gramophone Editor's Choice. In 2008, he was awarded the Avery Fisher Prize, and in 2012, Musical America honored him as "Instrumentalist of the Year.".

Gil Shaham received his training from Dorothy DeLay and Hyo Kang at the Juilliard School in New York. At the age of ten, he made his debut with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, and at fourteen, he played for the first time with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra under Zubin Mehta.

Gil Shaham has recorded the "great" violin repertoire for DG and Canary Classics. The violin concertos of the 1930s are particularly dear to him personally. Following the release of the first CD with five violin concertos from this period, Canary Classics released the second CD in February 2016, featuring the second violin concertos by Béla Bartók and Sergei Prokofiev.

Your father was a renowned astrophysicist and your mother a geneticist. How did you become a violinist?
My older brother also became a scientist. Perhaps I made music instead of trying to keep up with the conversations at dinner. I guess playing the violin was my rebellion.

You live in New York City, but even as a child you traveled a lot between America and Israel. Where do you feel more at home?
New York is home for me and my family. The comedian Alan King once said, "If Israel is my mother, then America is my friend." I like that because it reflects my own strong feelings for both.

You're married to a violinist. Is there ever any kind of competition?
I'm very fortunate to be married to the wonderful violinist Adele Anthony. We compete in the same way that I suppose most married couples do. Who gets more sleep? And so on... I think we're lucky to share this unusual lifestyle of a violinist in 2023. Working together is our favorite thing to do. Unfortunately, it doesn't happen often enough.

Do your children already play the violin?
All three of our children play the violin, although I don't think any of them want to become professional musicians. We thought it would be good for them to have music in their lives, and we're happy that they do now and seem to have an appreciation and love for it.

You once said that music has an incredible power because it reaches our pre-verbal selves. How do you experience music?
Perhaps it's the abstract nature of this art that makes it so universally understandable and so human. It's amazing that by moving the air, we create vibrations that allow us to grasp the consciousness of others. Imagine being able to understand Bach's consciousness 300 years later.

As a musician, you always have to work on yourself and improve; isn't that sometimes unpleasant?
Maestro Lorin Maazel once told me that the older you get, the more you enjoy music. I feel that's true for me. When I talk to other musicians my age, we often discuss how much more fun we have practicing now than we used to.

How much do you still practice each day?
Not enough.

With pandemics, wars, and climate disasters, the world is currently a challenging place. How do you cope with that?
There are so many things we can't control. At the same time, there are many we can control, and I try to focus on those as much as possible.

What would you still like to experience in this life, both musically and personally?
In many ways, music is both life and love. I hope to experience much more of both. There are many goals I've been pursuing for a long time and haven't given up on! At the same time, one of them is to be open and ready for new experiences and surprises, just as we all were as children.

Interview by Florian Schär | Classicpoint.net | May 1, 2023
Photo: Chris Lee

Next concerts

August 29, 2026 - Gil Shaham (violin), Kansas City Symphony, Matthias Pinscher (conductor)
September 27, 2026 - Gil Shaham (violin), Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Eva Ollikainen (conductor)
March 18, 2027 - Fantastique
March 19, 2027 - Fantastique