Faculty Members

Joel Smirnoff: Violinist, Conductor, Pedagogue

As violinist, Mr. Smirnoff performed on four continents over 23 years as member of the Juilliard String Quartet, joining as second violin in 1986 and replacing the legendary Robert Mann as first violin in 1997. In addition to his Grammy-nominated SONY disks with the Juilliard Quartet, Mr. Smirnoff also has an extensive catalog of solo recordings, including the world premiere recordings of numerous contemporary works by composers as diverse as Louis Gruenberg and Joan Tower.


Mr. Smirnoff received the Lifetime Grammy Award in 2011 for his many recordings with the Juilliard String Quartet and was honored the same year with the Alumni Professional Achievement Award from the University of Chicago, his Alma Mater.

Mr. Smirnoff has served on faculty of The Juilliard School since 1986, where he served as Violin Department Chair from 1992 until 2008. A longtime faculty member at the Tanglewood Music Festival, Mr. Smirnoff was conducting assistant to Maestro Seiji Ozawa and was Head of String Studies from 1995-2000. Mr. Smirnoff had been a member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra for six years in the early 1980's.

As a conductor, Mr. Smirnoff has appeared widely with orchestras within the United States, Europe and Asia, with a broad repertoire, and, notably, a remarkable recording of Elliott Carter's Piano Concerto with the Basel Sinfonietta and Charles Rosen as pianist. Presented by Maestro Ozawa at the Bernstein Memorial Concert of 1998 at Tanglewood, Mr. Smirnoff made his official American conducting debut with the San Francisco Symphony in July, 2000, conducting an all-Tchaikovsky program. Engagements quickly followed with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Phoenix Symphony, the Louisiana Philharmonic, the Chicago Philharmonic, the New World Symphony and others.

Mr. Smirnoff travels internationally to give Master Classes and serve on juries of the world's preeminent violin competitions, including the Naumburg, Seoul, Bartok, Indianapolis, Sendai, Harbni and China International Violin Competitions. In June, 2024, Mr. Smirnoff chaired the jury for the Bella Foundation's International Competition for Blind Musicians, held in Seoul, South Korea.

Mr. Smirnoff was born into an eminent New York musical family. His mother sang jazz with the Jack Teagarden Band under the stage name of Judy Marshall and his father, Zelly Smirnoff, played in the NBC Symphony under Toscanini, performed and recorded with the Bach Aria Group and was second violinist of the Stuyvesant String Quartet.

As second-prize winner of the 1983 International American Music Competition for Violin in Carnegie Hall, Mr. Smirnoff debuted at Carnegie Hall in its Emerging Artists series and at Town Hall in its Midtown Masters series. Mr. Smirnoff performed the Hindemith Violin Concerto at Tanglewood in 1993 and was, again, concerto soloist in 1998 at Tanglewood, performing the Berg Violin Concerto under the direction of Bernard Haitink in a concert memorial for violinist Louis Krasner, who commissioned the concerto.

Mr. Smirnoff, a new music performer who the New York Times called "…a persuasive exponent of the contemporary," participated in the world premieres of countless contemporary works, many of which were composed specifically for him. Mr. Smirnoff also composes and his work, "Food and Ancestry" for two violins, piano and drum, was commissioned by and performed at Hong Kong Baptist University in 2018. Most recently, Mr. Smirnoff scored the new documentary "Eva's Promise," a film tracing a Jewish family's devastation by the Holocaust and their legacy.

Mr. Smirnoff also plays jazz and appeared over many years as improvising violinist with the great jazz singer Tony Bennett in concert on and on TV. His improvised solo on "Fly Me to the Moon" can be seen on "Tony Bennett Live by Request" and two improvised jazz solos can be heard on the Grammy award-winning CD "Tony Bennett Sings Ellington Hot and Cool". He has also been guest soloist with Gunther Schuller and the American Jazz Orchestra, and with the Billy Taylor Trio.