Born in Israel, Avigail Bushakevitz grew up in South Africa and now lives in Berlin with her husband and their three young children. She has lived in Cape Town, New York and Tel Aviv, graduating from the Juilliard School of Music where she studied with Sylvia Rosenberg before she moved to Israel to learn Hebrew and study with Hagai Shaham at the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music. Whilst at the Juilliard, she was also employed as teaching assistant in Ear training, a position she held for three years.

Avigail has won numerous competitions and was named “Young Artist of the Year” in 2016 for producing exceptional work in the field of music in South Africa. In Israel she was awarded first prize in the national Israeli UNO competition in Jerusalem.

 As a soloist, Avigail has performed concerti by Tchaikovsky, Sibelius, Mendelssohn, Prokofiev, Saint-Saëns, Mozart, Beethoven and Bruch with orchestras in South Africa, Israel and Germany. Her love of baroque music and instruments has led her to play Bach and Locatelli concerti with baroque ensembles such as the Cape Town Baroque Orchestra. A passionate chamber musician, she is a member of the Franz Trio, which she founded in 2017 with her husband Ernst-Martin Schmidt and cellist Constance Ricard.  For as long as she can remember, she has also played with her brother, pianist Ammiel Bushakevitz. Together, they have toured Europe and South-Africa, have won a competition in Spain and recorded a CD of Mozart’s Violin and Piano Sonatas. 

As an orchestral musician, Avigail has played as concertmaster at the Royal Albert Hall at the BBC Proms in London under Sir Mark Elder, and in Israel under Zubin Mehta. As a member of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra she has toured Spain and Abu Dhabi under Daniel Barenboim. Since 2015, Avigail has been a member of the Konzerthaus Orchestra in Berlin.