David Garrett

David Garrett (born as David Bongartz on 4 September 1980) is a record-breaking German-American classical violinist and recording artist. Garrett was born in Aachen, Germany to an American prima ballerina, Dove Garrett, and a German lawyer and jurist, Georg Bongartz. He adopted his mother's maiden name as a pseudonym, as "it was more pronounceable". When Garrett was four years old, his father bought a violin for his older brother. The young Garrett took an interest and soon learned to play. A year later, he took part in a competition and won first prize. By the age of seven, he studied violin at the Lübeck Conservatoire, and by the age of 12, Garrett began working with the distinguished Polish violinist Ida Haendel, often traveling to London and other European cities to meet her. After leaving home at 17, he enrolled in the Royal College of Music in London, leaving after the first semester. On being asked in an interview if he was expelled, Garrett responded: "Well expelled wasn’t the official term… It was mutually agreed that me and the RCM were going separate ways after the first semester. I did skip some lessons – but I also broke in to do extra practice, so that didn’t help!" In 1999 he moved to New York to attend the Juilliard School, in 2003 winning the Composition Competition of Juilliard School with a fugue composed in the style of Johann Sebastian Bach. While at Juilliard he studied under Itzhak Perlman, one of the first to do so, and graduated in 2004. Between the years 1997–2002, David Garrett participated in four Keshet Eilon International Violin Master Courses, which take place in Kibbutz Eilon located on Israel’s mountainous northern border.