Giora Schmidt

Giora Schmidt (Hebrew: גיורא שמידט‎, born January 9, 1983) is an American/Israeli violinist.

Biography

Giora Schmidt was born into a family of musicians in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His parents emigrated from Israel in 1978, and played with the Philadelphia Opera Company Orchestra. His mother, Michal Schmidt is a cellist and pianist and is on the faculty of Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges and the University of Pennsylvania. His father, Dov Schmidt, is a violinist and businessman.

Schmidt began his violin studies at the age of four, and by 12 was commuting between Philadelphia and New York to study with Patinka Kopec and Pinchas Zukerman at the Manhattan School of Music. Schmidt did not truly become serious until the age of 14 when he began spending summers at the Perlman Music Program in Shelter Island, NY. There he met Itzhak Perlman who invited Schmidt to study with him and the late violin pedagogue Dorothy DeLay at the Juilliard Pre-College.

In between his lessons in New York, Schmidt worked intensely with violinist Geoffrey Michaels on scales, etudes and the Sonatas and Partitas of Johann Sebastian Bach – in the tradition of Efrem Zimbalist and Oscar Shumsky.