Robert Vijay Gupta

Indian-American violinist Robert Vijay Gupta joined the Los Angeles Philharmonic in June 2007 at the age of 19. Prior to joining the orchestra, Gupta received a Master’s degree in Music from Yale University and a Bachelor’s degree in Biology from Marist College. Parallel to his undergraduate studies, Gupta attended the Manhattan School of Music and the Juilliard School of Music, Pre-College Division. Gupta made his solo debut at the age of eleven in Tel Aviv with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Zubin Mehta. He has performed as a soloist with the New York Philharmonic, the Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, and has also performed widely as a chamber musician and recitalist on an international scale since the age of eight. Gupta recently crowdfunded his debut album Suryodaya through Kickstarter: the world music album was recorded at Walt Disney Concert Hall on the 1716 “Milstein” Stradivarius, and will be available mid-2012 on the Yarlung Records Label. Throughout his undergraduate course of study, Gupta held research assistant positions at CUNY Hunter College in New York City, where he worked on spinal cord neuronal regeneration, and at the Harvard Institutes of Medicine Center for Neurologic Diseases, where he studied the biochemical pathology of Parkinson’s disease. Gupta directs a non-profit organization called Street Symphony, which actively brings a live classical musical outreach concert series to greatly underserved mentally ill living within homeless, incarcerated, and Veteran communities on Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles. Robert Gupta is a 2011 TED Senior Fellow.