Yehudi Menuhin was born in New York in 1916. The son of Jewish emigrants from Russia, he obtained British citizenship in 1985 (he also has the title of Lord). He revealed himself as a prodigious violinist at an extremely early age, and he offered his first public concert in San Francisco when he was only five years old. Student of some of the foremost maestros of the violin, he appeared in Paris at the age of ten, in New York at the age of eleven, and shortly thereafter in Berlin. In 1934 he rejected a visit to Germany on the grounds of his Jewishness, while requesting that the exile of other Jewish musicians be annulled, and in 1935 he went on his first world-tour. During World War II, he gave more than 500 concerts for the Red Cross and the Allied Forces. After the war, he performed in Germany in 1947 and in Moscow in 1950, and he was responsible for the intercultural exchange program between the United States and the USSR in 1955.

In addition to his career as violinist, he has also directed orchestras. Moreover, he has made a significant contribution to the growth of the teaching of music, through the creation of two important schools in Great Britain and Switzerland. Standout human rights activist, he has offered charitable concerts across the world in support of numerous causes. Lord Yehudi Menuhin is also known for his collection of more than 30 violins as well as for his books: "The Violin", "The Music of Man", "Violin and Viola", etc. Winner of the Yawahasjal Nehru Award (1970), gold medal from the General Association of Authors and Editors (1995), and Civil Merit Cross of Spain (1995), among many other honors and distinctions, he has also received honorary doctorate degrees from the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, the Sorbonne and Toronto, among others.