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Nora Chastain
Nora Chastain (born 1961) is an American classical violinist and teacher.

Background
Nora Chastain was born in Berkeley, California, as a daughter of a child psychologist and a urban planer. At the age of eight she began her violin lessons with Anne Crowden in Berkeley. In 1979 she continued her studies at the Cincinnati Conservatory and at the Juilliard School in New York with Dorothy DeLay. Later she moved to Europe where she studied at the International Menuhin Music Academyin Gstaad (Switzerland) with Alberto Lysy, Sandor Vegh, Ana Chumachenco and Sir Yehudi Menuhin. Nora Chastain is grand daughter of composer Roy Harris and grand niece of cellist Julian Kahn.

Music career
Nora Chastain made her concert debut at age sixteen in Berlin playing Samuel Barber´s Violin Concerto. Since then has been a regular guest with such orchestras as the San Francisco Symphony, the Orchestre de Paris, Cincinnati Philharmonia, the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra and the Bern Symphony Orchestra. She is a founding member of the Menuhin Festival Piano Quartet and Trio Kreisleriana.

Her chamber music activities have brought her to many of the worlds´s capitals, including Frankfurt, Hamburg, Berlin, Bonn, Paris, Milano, Zürich, Geneva, Edinburgh, Washington D.C., New York, Boston, San Francisco and Sydney. Ms. Chastain´s recordings include sonatas of Mozart, Beethoven, Faure, Debussy, many works for piano trio and quartet as well as Bartok´s second violin concerto. She has been a prize winner at several competitions including the Menuhin Competition in Paris in 1985. In 1993 she was awarded the prestigious annual "Förderpreis der Europäischen Wirtschaft" in Zürich as soloist.

Teaching career
An active teacher, Nora Chastain is Professor of violin at the Universität der Künste Berlin and the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste in Zürich. Until 2004 she held a Professorship at the Musikhochschule Luebeck. As one of Europes most sought after teachers Nora Chastain has amongst her students international prize winners, concertmasters of major european orchestras, members of well known chamber ensembles and faculty members of universities of music. She gives regular master classes and serves on juries of international competitions. A main focus of her teaching is the integration of the american and european traditions of violin playing of the last 50 years.