The violin she plays is a 1739 "Ebersolt" Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù,
which was permanently loaned to her by a Boston icthyologist and
instrument collector after hearing her perform the Sibelius concerto
(with the Boston Symphony conducted by Seiji Ozawa) at Carnegie Hall.
All her recordings were made with this violin, except for the
Tchaikovsky concerto, on a loaned Stradivarius.
Her father, Jack, a physicist, signed up both himself and her for
violin lessons when she was three. When she was five, she said to him
"Maybe you should stop; you're not so good." He stopped and she
continued.
touring, fronting various orchestras with the Violin Concerto of
John Adams (2003)