Ilya Gringolts, is a classical violinist and composer who has won multiple awards. He is Professor of Violin at the Hochschulen f�r Musik in Basel, and Violin International Fellow at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. In addition to the modern violin, he has a continued commitment to period-instrument performance. He is also the founding first violinist of the Zurich-based Gringolts Quartet with Armenian second violinist Anahit Kurtikyan, Romanian violist Silvia Simionescu and German cellist Claudius Herrmann. His sister Olga is married to violinist Maxim Vengerov. Gringolts studied violin in St. Petersburg with Tatiana Liberova and Jeanna Metallidi, and then at age seventeen at Juilliard School with Itzhak Perlman. Perlman conducted the Israel Philharmonic in Gringolt's recording of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto and Shostakovich Violin Concerto No. 1 for Deutsche Grammophon. Ilya Gringolts plays the "ex-Kiesewetter" Stradivarius violin, loaned to him by the Stradivari Society of Chicago. [More at Wikipedia]

July 2nd, 1982 in Saint Petersburg (Age 42)