Winner of the 1998 International Violin Competition "Premio Paganini", Ilya Gringolts was also awarded two special prizes for the youngest ever competitor to be placed in the final and the best interpreter of Paganini’s Caprices. Ilya studied violin and composition at the St. Petersburg Special Music School with Tatiana Liberova and Jeanna Metallidi and at the Juilliard School with Itzhak Perlman and the late Dorothy Delay. He was also one of twelve young artists selected by the BBC for their New Generation Artists Scheme.

Ilya's recent and forthcoming solo engagements include the Mahler Chamber Orchestra/Abbado, BBC Scottish Symphony/Volkov, a tour of Germany and Spain with NDR Hannover/Petrenko, Halle Orchestra/Erbele, Deutsches Sinfonie Orchester Berlin/Norrington, National Symphony Orchestra/Grams at Wolf Trap Centre for the Performing Arts, Bournemouth Symphony/Karabits, Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg/Hrusa, the Boston Haydn & Handel Society/Llewellyn and St Magnus Festival with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Ilya has undertaken extensive tours of Asia and Australasia, performing with the Melbourne Symphony, Western Australia Symphony, NZSO, Auckland Philharmonia and in October 2007, he appeared in a gala concert in Osaka to mark the 25th anniversary of the Osaka Symphony Hall.

His recital highlights include appearances at the Palau de la Musica, Milan Serate Musicali and summer festivals including Beethoven Bonn, Verbier, Lucerne, Moritzburg and Colmar. He will present the complete cycle of Beethoven sonatas at Verbier and in subsequent tours to Italy and Spain. In June 2008, he will give the world premiere of a new Violin Sonata by Sir Peter Maxwell Davis at St. Magnus and Cheltenham Festivals. He will also attend the 2008 Dvorak's Prague International Music Festival and the 2009 Enescu Festival.

In addition to his three previous Deutsche Grammophon GmbH discs, in 2007 he recorded the Beethoven Triple Concerto with Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela/Abbado for DGG. Ilya is a Hyperion Artist and his violin disc of Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst for Hyperion which includes the six Etudes, Erlkoenig, Otello Fantasy and Elegy was released in February 2008. Most recently, he won a Gramophone Award for his Taneyev Chamber Music CD for DGG. He has also made three previous recordings for DGG and his third recording (Prokofiev Violin Concerto No.1 and Sibelius) was released in 2004 to great critical acclaim. His previous recordings for DGG - a disc of solo Bach and the Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich first Concertos - received outstanding reviews.

Ilya plays a Ruggeri violin on loan from Otto Karl Schenk, Bern/Switzerland.