Who was Ivan Galamian for whom our institute is named? He was perhaps the greatest violin pedagogue in history, teaching from 1925 until his death in New York City in 1981. Almost everyone who during that time was training to be a violinist had lessons with him, and even if it was only a single lesson one could put on one’s resume that he had studied with Galamian, and that fact alone seemed to open carreer doors.

Born in Persia, he grew up in Russia but spent nearly all of his adult life in New York, teaching at the Juilliard School of Music and the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.  Perhaps the most striking professional aspect of his career was that he gave up performing entirely in his early twenties to devote himself to teaching.  That was, and remains, almost unique in the history of violinists.  This fact speaks to his strong character and intellect but most of all to his dedication to teaching. Many say that he turned to teaching because of nervousness while performing, but the dedication to devote 10 hours a day, 7 days a week, 51 weeks of the year to his students is not born of the old adage, those who can’t play, teach.  I believe it was his first choice.

Mr. Galamian, or Mr. “G”, as he was referred to by his students, although I never remember actually hearing anyone address him thus, was very beloved and very scary.  He had the most incredible eyes, which were his main means of communication for a majority of his students.  They were so expressive, flashing in annoyance at a wrong note, or transmitting utter frustration at being subjected to an unprepared lesson, and they could bore into one unrelentlessly if one had broken any rule of his.  But could they ever sparkle with delight and humor, not infrequently at some poor student’s expense!  Ultimately they were kindly eyes, giving support and showing fatherly affection, which made up for all the other piercing looks and bound his students to him with an undying loyalty.

Sometimes that loyalty appeared later in life, as with me.  During my years at the Meadowmount School of Music, which he founded in 1944 in the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York, I was busy being an annoying adolescent and trying to avoid the required practicing.  It is a  mystery to me how I learned anything at all.  My fellow students during those summers, a truly awesome list including Pinchas Zukerman, Kyung Wha Chung, Itzak Perlman, Young-Uck Kim, Miriam Fried and more, were probably as responsible for my training as was Mr. Galamian. We were treated to endless performances by these rising stars who inspired me and more importantly, showed me the Galamian Bow Arm as it was meant to be!

The loyalty and admiration for Mr. Galamian crept up on me gradually, as I built a career of my own, and especially as I began teaching, which I did after 15 years of being a concertmaster, soloist and chamber musician. Only then did I realize how much I had actually absorbed from my lessons with Mr. G. and I began to realize what an enormous influence he had had on my approach to playing and teaching.  I had been negligent (read rebellious) by not perusing his book “Principles of Violin Playing and Teaching” until I started my own teaching career.  When I finally did read it I realized that I had been teaching those principles without being conscious of the fact that they were not my own!