Background
Miriam Fried was born in Satu Mare, Romania but moved with her family to Israel when she was aged 2. Her mother was a piano teacher.
Miriam Fried was born in Satu Mare, Romania but moved with her family to Israel when she was aged 2. Her mother was a piano teacher.
Student, Joseph Gingold at Ind.
Her family settled in Herzliya. Miriam first took up piano lessons but when she was eight years old she made a definite choice for the violin. Miriam Fried is the dedicatee and first performer of the Violin Concerto by Donald Erb.
Other composers who have written works for her include Ned Rorem and Alexander Boskovich. She has recorded the complete solo sonatas and partitas of Johann Sebastian Bach, and twice recorded the Sibelius Violin Concerto. She plays a 1718 Stradivarius believed to have been formerly owned by Louis Spohr, and also by Regina Strinasacchi, for whom Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote his Sonata in B-flat, K. 454.
She has been Artistic Director and chair of the faculty at the Steans Institute for Young Artists of the Ravinia Festival since 1993. She was Professor of Violin at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University. Her students include Pekka Kuusisto and Nancy Zhou.
She gives master classes internationally. Their sons are the pianist Jonathan Biss, with whom she often plays, and Illinois State Representative Daniel Biss.
She was a member of the Mendelssohn String Quartet. She is a member of the faculty of the New England Conservatory.
Married Paul M. Biss, June 29, 1969.