Simin Ganatra is the first violinist of the Grammy Award-winning Pacifica Quartet and professor of violin and chair of the String Department at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. She has won wide recognition for her performances throughout the United States and abroad, performing numerous times in such prestigious venues as Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, the Kennedy Center, Wigmore Hall, the Concertgebeouw in Amsterdam, and Carnegie’s Zankel Hall.
Collaborations include performances with Yo-Yo Ma, Anthony McGill, Lynn Harrell, and Menahem Pressler, among others. Simin Ganatra is the recipient of numerous prizes, including the Naumburg Award, the Cleveland Quartet Award, and top prizes at the Concert Artists Guild Competition, the Coleman Chamber Music Competition, and the Schubert Club Competition.
Originally from Los Angeles, Ganatra studied with Idell Low, Robert Lipsett, and Roland and Almita Vamos. She is a graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory, where she was concertmaster of the Oberlin Conservatory Orchestra and recipient of the Louis Kaufman Prize for outstanding performance in chamber music. Before her appointment as Professor of Violin at Indiana University, she served as professor at the University of Illinois-Champaign/Urbana, Northwestern University, and the University of Chicago.
She has many recordings on the Cedille Records label, including the complete String Quartets of Felix Mendelssohn, Elliot Carter, and Dmitri Shostakovich. In 2021, the Pacifica Quartet earned a second Grammy Award for Contemporary Voices, an exploration of music by three Pulitzer Prize-winning composers: Shulamit Ran, Jennifer Higdon, and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich.
The CMIM jury is housed at the Ritz-Carlton – Montréal
