Music
Ani Kavafian
born 1948 · violinist, professor
Istanbul-born Armenian American violinist raised in Detroit, a pupil of Mischa Mischakoff, who became the longest-serving artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and a Yale professor.
- Born
Istanbul, Turkey
age 78- Detroit years
- 1956–1960s
- Field
- Music
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Ani Kavafian, the older of the two violinist sisters, was born in Istanbul in 1948 to an Armenian family and began piano lessons at three. After the family emigrated to the United States in 1956 and settled in Detroit, she took up the violin with Ara Zerounian and then with Mischa Mischakoff, concertmaster of the Detroit Symphony. She went on to the Juilliard School and Ivan Galamian. In 1973 she won the Young Concert Artists International Auditions, and in 1979 she received an Avery Fisher Career Grant and joined the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, where her membership has become the longest of any artist in the society's history. She has appeared as a soloist with the New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia and Cleveland orchestras, often in duo with her sister Ida. Since 2006 she has been a full professor at the Yale School of Music.
Highlights
- Studied violin in Detroit with Ara Zerounian and Mischa Mischakoff
- Young Concert Artists winner (1973); Avery Fisher Career Grant (1979)
- Longest-tenured artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center
- Professor at the Yale School of Music since 2006