Background
Kavafian was born in Istanbul to parents of Armenian descent.
Kavafian was born in Istanbul to parents of Armenian descent.
She studied at Juilliard from 1966 under Ivan Galamian and Sally Thomas.
In 1956 she moved with her family to Detroit, by which time she had begun playing piano. She began on violin at age nine, studying under Ara Zerounian and Mischa Mischakoff. Her sister, Ida Kavafian, also studied at Juilliard, and the two have played together frequently in concert over the course of their careers.
Ani toured through the 1970s, and taught at the Manhattan School of Music and the Mannes College of Music in the 1980s.
She has also taught and performed at the Sarasota Music Festival. Kavafian"s repertory is grounded in the concertos of Mozart, Brahms, and Mendelssohn, but she is also well known for her performances of twentieth century works of Samuel Barber, Béla Bartók, Dmitri Shostakovich, Erich Korngold, Aram Khachaturian, Arno Babajanian, Henri Lazarof, and Tod Machover.
She plays a 1736 Stradivarius.
