Winner of the Walter W. Naumburg International Violin Competition at the age of twenty, the youngest prizewinner at that time, as well as a recipient of the 1983 Avery Fisher Career Grant and winner of the Avery Fisher Prize in 1999.
She attended the Curtis Institute of Music and then the Juilliard School.
She had to have one of the tips of her fingers surgically reattached after a kitchen accident in 1994, but returned to playing violin a couple years later.
She was born in Rome, but her family moved to Cherry Hill, New Jersey when she was eight years old.
She made many appearances on The Tonight Show, which was hosted by Johnny Carson.
