Gil Shaham (Hebrew: גיל שחם; born February 19, 1971) is an American violinist. His accolades include a Grammy Award in 1999, and he has performed as a soloist with such orchestras as the New York Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Russian National Orchestra, Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, and the Orchestre de Paris. Gil Shaham was born in Urbana, Illinois, while his Israeli parents were on an academic fellowship at the University of Illinois. His father, Jacob, was an astrophysicist and his mother, Meira Diskin, was a cytogeneticist. His sister is the pianist Orli Shaham. His brother, Shai Shaham, is the head of the Laboratory of Developmental Genetics at Rockefeller University. When he was two years old, t...