Michelle Barzel Ross is a GRAMMY™ Award-winning violinist, composer, and improviser, whose music-making has been hailed as "affecting" (The New Yorker), "gorgeous" (The New York Times), and "nobly shaped and impeccably sustained" (The San Francisco Chronicle).  

As a performer, Michelle’s artistry spans engagements with leading venues, artists, and ensembles around the globe. As a soloist, she has debuted in venues such as Carnegie Hall, with the San Francisco Symphony, Orchestre de Chambre de Paris, KKL Lucerne, Cité de la Musique, Metropolitan Museum’s Temple of Dendur. A renowned chamber musician, she often collaborates with Itzhak Perlman, Mitsuko Uchida, and most recently toured as guest first violinist with the Juilliard String Quartet. Michelle recently joined superstar mandolinist Avi Avital and Between  Worlds Ensemble for a European tour, as well as the Musicians from Marlboro National and  International tours for six seasons. Michelle is an in-demand guest concertmaster with the world’s greatest orchestras, including Orchestre de Paris, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra, MusicAeterna, Orchestre national d'Auvergne, and Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, and more. 

As a composer and improviser, Michelle is lauded as a “formidable composer…with fearlessness of expression” (Textura), her works praised as “very effective” (The Strad) and like a “fever dream” (A Closer listen). Michelle’s compositions weave poetic labyrinths and dialogue with composers of the past, as Gramophone describes “the many shapes and colors echo across Ross's wistful Désenvoyé,  inspired by Schumann's hidden voices and the world of 'unsent' longings, with further references to  Webern… fascinating.“ Michelle has been commissioned by the Lucerne Festival, Tanglewood  Music Center, Juilliard String Quartet, The Jasper String Quartet, The Perlman Music Program, and  her works have been premiered at leading venues such as the Palau Musica in Barcelona, Vienna's  MusikVerein, Paris’s Thêatre les Bouffes du Nord. Michelle’s second string quartet Birds on the Moon was commissioned by the Juilliard String Quartet and Chamber Music Napa Valley, and is dedicated to the ensemble’s beloved late violist, Roger Tapping. Birds on the Moon recently had its world premiere in California, and will be featured by the JSQ at MusikVerein’s 2026 Beethoven Festival. Passionate about expanding the bounds of contemporary music as both a performer and pedagogue, Michelle is faculty at Lucerne Festival Contemporary. In November 2024, Michelle collaborative orchestral vignette with composer Stephen Mennotti and Orchesterschule Insel Ein Leid auf den Lippen: Carry the Sun within your Heart toured Switzerland; the work is dedicated to the children who perished during the Holocaust at Theresienstadt and is a companion piece to Hans Krasa’s Brundibar. 

Celebrated for her prolific output as a GRAMMY™ winning recording artist, Michelle is known for her solo Bach debut album, pop-up project and “affecting blog posts” (The New Yorker) Discovering Bach: Complete Sonatas and Partitas of J.S. Bach, where her “delicacy and control…truly impresses” (Classics Today). Michelle recently released her second solo album, Vivaldi: Four Seasons with Eric Jacobsen and the Odyssey Orchestra. Featured on Samuel Adler’s Chamber Music, Michelle is praised as a “stellar violinist... impresses with intense feeling and consummate poise…lyrical poignancy beautifully rendered” (Textura). A self-taught improviser across genres from Baroque to Contemporary, Michelle is a featured artist improvising with her longtime friend Jon Batiste on Movement 11’ from his GRAMMY™ winning Album of the Year We Are. Michelle’s compositions have been recorded on Naïve Records by Christian-Pierre la Marca and Jean-Frédéric Neuberger, Carr-Petrova Duo, Arlen Hlusko, Sæunn Thorsteinsdottír, Caitlin Sullivan and Long Echo Records. 

Michelle is the recipient of the prestigious Leonore Annenberg Career Grant and holds degrees from The Juilliard School and a B.A. in English Literature from Columbia University.  Principal teachers and mentors include her life-long teacher Itzhak Perlman, Ronald Copes, Dorothy DeLay, Catherine Cho, Dr. Samuel Adler, and Dr. Kendall Briggs. Born in California and raised in both Canada and New York, Michelle celebrates her Mizrahi-Iraqi heritage.