Her first recording was the score for the MGM movie, The Fixer, composed for solo violin by Academy-Award winner Maurice Jarre. Her CD début, two recordings as soloist with the Israel Philharmonic, were Bach/Vivaldi and The Lark Ascending. Solo discs on the 4Tay label are King David’s Lyre, a celebration of Jerusalem 3000, and Here’s One, an American collection which was featured in fifty 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. Cecil Burleigh: Music for Violin and Piano on the Naxos American Classics series (8.559061) received the same honour from the American Record Guide for 2002. Continuing her exploration of Jewish repertoire on 4Tay, she has recorded The Golden Dove: Masterpieces from the Russian Jewish Folk Music Society as well as Elijah’s Violin, which presents the première of David Amram’s Sonata and other twentieth-century works.
Zina Schiff has performed at such summer festivals as Aspen, Music from Bear Valley, Mendocino, Sewanee and Newport, Rhode Island. Radio listeners are familiar with her appearances on National Public Radio’s Performance Today, WGBH’s Morning Pro Music in Boston, and New York’s WQXR. Her many awards include the Young Musicians Foundation Début Award, the San Francisco Symphony Foundation Award, and a grant from the Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund for Music. While the youngest student at the Curtis Institute of Music, she won both the Junior and Senior Auditions of the Philadelphia Orchestra. It was at her Philadelphia Orchestra début that she first appeared as the soloist in Bloch’s Baal Shem Suite. Named one of the Top Ten College Winners by Glamour Magazine during her senior year at the University of California at Berkeley, Zina Schiff was selected an Outstanding Young Artist by Musical America and honoured as a Distinguished Alumna by Louisiana State University in Shreveport, where she earned a Masters Degree in Liberal Arts. She is currently in the Master of Jewish Studies programme at the Spertus Institute.
