The Core Program and Music Department are excited to welcome violinist, speaker, and author Vijay Gupta. The talk is open to the entire community. First-year students are required to attend.
Music isn’t a form of entertainment. It’s a lifeline. For Vijay Gupta, all art is a kind of soul-metabolism: a way of transforming pain, grief and trauma into something which nourishes. Described by The New Yorker as “a visionary violinist and a radical thinker in the classical music world,” Vijay is an internationally celebrated musician, speaker, and advocate who bridges the worlds of art, justice, and healing. In hopeful, inspiring talks, he shows us creative ways to revitalize our sense of hope and belonging.
Vijay Gupta is the founder and Artistic Director of Street Symphony, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that has presented thousands of musical workshops and performances in shelters, county jails, state hospitals, and prisons—creating spaces of connection for people in reentry from homelessness, addiction, and incarceration. For Vijay, music is not entertainment. It’s a lifeline, a way to process pain, reclaim dignity, and transform grief into belonging.
A member of the first violin section of the Los Angeles Philharmonic for 12 years, Vijay has performed globally as a recitalist, soloist, and chamber musician and is a founding member of the Darshan Piano Trio and Tesserae Baroque. His recordings span repertoire from Bach to contemporary composers, and in 2024, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Vijay is a dynamic communicator whose three TED talks have garnered millions of views. He has delivered keynote addresses for the American Medical Association, The Richmond Forum, The Aspen Institute, Hallmark, Accenture, the Mayo Clinic, the U.S. Psychiatric Congress, and the League of American Orchestras. In 2026, Grand Central Publishing will release his memoir Restrung, exploring loss, resilience, and the power of music to transform the human spirit.
