Kim Kashkashian was born of Armenian parents in Michigan. She studied the viola with Karen Tuttle. She also studied at the Interlochen Center for the Arts. She won the 2nd prize at the 1980 Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition and the 1980 ARD International Music Competition in Munich.[2] She has been featured on over 30 albums and performs pieces from both classical and contemporary composers, working among others with Gidon Kremer and Yo Yo Ma, the Vienna Philharmonic and Nikolaus Harnoncourt. She also played the viola in the soundtrack of the film Ulysses' Gaze, together with Eleni Karaindrou. Her albums have won awards, notably the 1999 Edison Prize and the Cannes Prize for Chamber Music in 2000.

 

She commissioned new works for the viola, from composers such as Tigran Mansurian and Peter Eötvös.

 

Kashkashian won a 2013 Grammy Award for Best Classical Instrumental Solo for the 2012 album Kurtág / Ligeti: Music for Viola.

 

Kashkashian currently teaches at the New England Conservatory.[3] Previously she taught at Freiburg and in Berlin. Among her students are Julia Rebekka Adler, Sheila Browne, Lim Soon Lee and Diemut Poppen. She is the founder and artistic director of Music for Food, a musician-led initiative for local hunger relief.