Ivan Galamian

Ivan Galamian (1903–1981) was an Armenian-American violin teacher, described by Isaac Stern as one of the most productive and efficient music educators in the USA. Galamian was born in Tabriz, Iran to an Armenian family and relocated to Moscow in his early childhood. He studied violin at the School of the Philharmonic Society with Konstantin Mostras until his graduation in 1919. In the 1920s, Ivan Galamian moved to Paris and studied there with Lucien Capet. Shortly after his debut as a soloist, Ivan decided to give up stage career to teach violin full-time. He had been teaching at the Rachmaninoff Russian Conservatory of Paris from 1925 to 1929. Galamian relocated to the United States permanently in 1937. He taught violin at the Curtis Institute of Music and became the head of the violin department at the Juilliard School in 1946. In 1962, Ivan authored two seminal textbooks, Principles of Violin Playing and Teaching and Contemporary Violin Technique, incorporating elements of both the Russian and French schools of violin in his method. Notable Galamian students include Itzhak Perlman, Kyung-Wha Chung, Pinchas Zukerman, Berl Senofsky, Miriam Fried, Dmitry Sitkovetsky, Michael Rabin, Arnold Steinhardt, Jonathan Carney, Glenn Dicterow, and David Nadien.