Ilya Gringolts was born in 1982. He studied at Music School No. 11 in St. Petersburg (violin class of Tatiana Liberova, composition class of Zhanna Metallidi) and at the Juilliard School of Music in New York with Itzhak Perlman. At the age of 16, he won the N. Paganini International Violin Competition in Genoa, where, in addition to the highest award, he received two special prizes and became the youngest winner in the history of the competition.

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The musician performs in the largest halls of the world with leading orchestras and conductors. He plays the first violin part in the Gringolts Quartet, which he founded in 2008. Collaborates with well-known musicians, including J. Bashmet, D. Kadush, I. Golan, P. Laul, A. Madjar, N. Altstedt, A. Ottensamer, A. Tamesti, J. Widman. Has taken part in festivals in Lucerne, Kuhmo, Verbier, Colmar, Bucharest (J. Enescu Festival), Salzburg, Gstaad (Yehudi Menuhin Festival), Edinburgh.

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He pays great attention to rarely performed and contemporary works, as well as historical performing practice. He premiered many works by Peter Maxwell Davies, Augusta Reid Thomas, Christophe Bertan and Mikael Jarrel. He performed N. Paganini's First Violin Concerto in the original key with the Finnish Baroque Orchestra, with whom he soon intends to perform rare concertos by P. Locatelli.

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The musician's recordings have been released by Deutsche Grammophon, BIS, Hyperion, Onyx, Orchid Classics. In 2017, albums were released with concerts by E. V. Korngold and J. Adams (Copenhagen Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchid Classics), a concert by A. Dvorak (Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, Deutsche Grammophon) and duets by I. Stravinsky (BIS).

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Ilya Gringolts is a professor at the University of the Arts Zurich and a visiting professor at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music in Glasgow. Plays a violin by Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesu (1742-1743) from a private collection.