Ivry Gitlis

Ivry Gitlis was born in 1922 in Haifa

Ivry Gitlis was born Yitzhak-Meir Gitlis in Haifa in 1922. His parents, Asher and Hedva, had emigrated from Kamianets-Podilskyi in 1921. He got his first violin at age 5.

After Bronisław Huberman heard him play, money was raised so he could study in France. He arrived in Paris in 1933, entered the Paris Conservatoire and graduated in 1935. His teachers included George Enescu, Jacques Thibaud and Carl Flesch.

In 1940 he went to London, where he worked in a war factory and then joined the artists branch of the British Army. After the war he debuted with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. He moved to the United States in 1955 and toured there.

In 1963 he became the first Israeli violinist to play in the Soviet Union. In 1968 he performed with Yoko Ono and The Dirty Mac in a Rolling Stones film project. He founded the Festival de Vence in 1972 and acted in a film by François Truffaut in 1975.

From the late 1960s he lived in Paris. In 2008 he became patron of the association Inspiration(s), which works to make classical music open to all. He died in Paris on 24 December 2020.