Violinist Zina Schiff has been described by the New York Times as an instrumentalist of "Luscious high voltage...vintage Heifetz." The comparison to the legendary Heifetz is apt, as Zina is a Heifetz proteg_e. With her special blend of passion, poetry and communicative power, she has dazzled audiences throughout North America, Eastern and Western Europe, Israel and Australia. In the United States, Zina has soloed with such major orchestras as Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Rochester, Brooklyn, San Antonio, Nashville, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle.

Zina's many awards include the Young Musicians Foundation Debut Award, the San Francisco Symphony Foundation Award, and a grant from the Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund for Music. A student of Ivan Galamian at The Curtis Institute of Music, she is the only violinist to have won both the Junior and Senior Auditions of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Named one of the "Top Ten College Winners" by Glamour Magazine during her senior year at the University of California at Berkeley, Zina was selected as an "Outstanding Young Artist" by Musical America and honored as a "Distinguished Alumna" by Louisiana State University in Shreveport, where she earned her masters degree in liberal arts.

Zina has performed at such summer festivals as Aspen, Music from Bear Valley, Mendocino, Sewanee and Newport, Rhode Island, where her artistry was described as "pure perfume". Radio listeners are familiar with Zina's appearances on National Public Radio's Performance Today, WGBH's Morning Pro Music in Boston, and New York's WQXR. Television viewers worldwide saw Zina on the PBS "Nova" program entitled "What is Music?", where she performed the Sibelius concerto on an experimental violin by Texas A & M professor Joseph Nagyvary. This led to a subsequent recital at the Bush Presidential Library and recording of The Stradivarius Puzzle on Texas A & M records. She performed the New York premiere of Richard Nanes' Rhapsody - Hebraic Lament at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and gave the European premiere at the Dohany Street Synagogue for the Budapest Spring Festival.

Zina's first recording was the score for the MGM movie, The Fixer, composed for solo violin by Academy-Award winner Maurice Jarre. Her CD debut was with the Israel Philharmonic - a Bach/Vivaldi album and The Lark Ascending, featuring the music of Vaughan Williams. She has also recorded the Peter Jona Korn Violin Concerto for Premiere. Of her newest solo disk, The Golden Dove: Masterpieces from the Jewish Folk Music Society on the 4Tay label, the American Record Guide wrote: "Zina Schiff gives this music a deeply personal voice. She is a remarkable violinist with a huge range of color and nuance. She plays every piece on this recording with intensity and emotional depth." Her previous 4Tay disks are King David's Lyre, a celebration of Jewish music from across the 20th Century, and Here's One, an American collection of music by William Grant Still, Aaron Copland, Henry Cowell, Florence Price and Lee Hoiby which was featured in 50 countries on the radio show Art of the States. Both of these CDs were selected as Critics Choices for 1997 by the American Record Guide. Chosen as Critics Choice for 2002 was Cecil Burleigh: Music for Violin and Piano on the Naxos American Classics Series. Critics on four continents have been excited by Zina's "communicated sincerity and sensitivity - call it charisma" (San Diego Union) and her "complete mastery of the violin which took her audience's breath away in a programme worthy of her teacher Heiftez" (London Daily Telegraph).

Selected Orchestral Repertoire
Bach - Concerto No. 1; Concerto No. 2; Double Concerto
Barber - Concerto
Beethoven - Concerto; Romance No. 1 in G; Romance No. 2 in F
Ben-Haim - Songs Without Words
Bernstein - Serenade
Bloch - Baal Shem Suite, Concerto
Brahms - Concerto; Double Concerto
Bruch - Concerto No. 1 in G; Concerto No. 2 in D; Scotch Fantasy
Castelnuovo-Tedesco - Concerto No. 2 (The Prophets)
Chausson - Concerto; Poeme
Creston - Concerto
Dvorak - Concerto
Glazunov - Concerto
Hovhaness - Concerto No. 2
Kabalevsky - Concerto
Khatchaturian - Concerto
Lalo - Symphonie Espagnole
Mendelssohn - Concerto
Mozart - Concerto No. 5; Symphonia Concertante
Nanes - Rhapsody
Partos - Yizkor
Prokofiev - Concerto No. 2
Ravel - Tzigane
Saint-Saens - Concerto No. 3; Havanaise; Rondo Capriccioso
Sarasate - Zigunerweisen
Sibelius - Concerto
Sinding - Suite in A
Spohr - Concerto No. 8
Tchaikovsky - Concerto
Vaughan-Williams - Concerto; Lark Ascending
Vivaldi - Concerto in A; Concerto in G; Concerto for 2 violins
Walton - Concerto
Wieniawski - Concerto No. 2
Wolf-Ferrari - Concerto