Galamian, Ivan (Alexander)
Galamian, Ivan (Alexander)
Galamian, Ivan (Alexander), eminent Ar menian-born American violinist and pedagogue; b. Tabriz, Persia (of Armenian parents), Feb. 5, 1903; d. N.Y., April 14, 1981. He studied with Konstantin Mostras at the school of Moscow’s Phil. Soc. (1916–22), then attended Lucien Capet’s master course in Paris (1922–23), where he made his formal debut (1924). He taught at the Russian Cons. (1925–39) and at the Ecole Normale de Musique (1936–39) there. He settled in N.Y. (1939), becoming a teacher at the Henry St. Settlement School (1941). He was later named to the faculty of the Curtis Inst. of Music in Philadelphia (1944) and of the Juilliard School of Music in N.Y. (1946), and also founder of the Meadowmount School for string players in Westport, N.Y. (1944). Among his numerous students were Itzhak Perlman, Michael Rabin, Kyung-Wha Chung, Erick Friedman, Miriam Fried, Pinchas Zuckerman, YoungUck Kim, and Jaime Laredo. He publ. Principles of Violin Playing and Teaching (with E. Green; Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1962; 2nd ed., rev., 1985) and Contemporary Violin Technique (with F. Neumann; 2 vols., N.Y, 1966, 1977).
Bibliography
E. Green et al., Miraculous Teacher: I. G. and the Meadowmount Experience (Ann Arbor, 1993).
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire