[1] Born in Vilnius, he was soon recognized as a child prodigy and was trained in the Russian classical violin style in St. Petersburg.

Accompanying his parents to escape the violence of the Russian Revolution, he moved to the United States as a teenager, where his Carnegie Hall debut was rapturously received.

Fritz Kreisler, another leading violinist of the twentieth century, said after hearing Heifetz's debut, "We might as well take our fiddles and break them across our knees.

Recognized as a child prodigy, he made his public debut at seven, in Kovno (now Kaunas, Lithuania) playing the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto.

In 1910, he entered the violin class of Ionnes Nalbandian at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory and later studied under Leopold Auer.

After the 12-year-old Heifetz performed the Mendelssohn violin concerto, Abell reported that Kreisler said to all present, 'We may as well break our fiddles across our knees.

On October 27, 1917, Heifetz played for the first time in the United States, at Carnegie Hall in New York City, and became an immediate sensation.

[citation needed] Heifetz's musicianship was such that he would demonstrate to his accompanist how he wanted passages to sound on the piano, and would even suggest which fingerings to use.

[20] Heifetz was "regarded as the greatest violin virtuoso since Paganini", wrote Lois Timnick of the Los Angeles Times.

[3] "He set all standards for 20th-century violin playing...everything about him conspired to create a sense of awe", wrote music critic Harold Schonberg of The New York Times.

His use of rapid vibrato, emotionally charged portamento, fast tempi, and superb bow control coalesced to create a highly distinctive sound that makes Heifetz's playing instantly recognizable to aficionados.

On October 28, 1927, Heifetz was the starring act at the grand opening of Tucson, Arizona's now-historic Temple of Music and Art.

Various critics have blamed his limited success in chamber ensembles to the fact that his artistic personality tended to overwhelm his colleagues.

Collaborations include his 1941 recordings of piano trios by Beethoven, Schubert, and Brahms with cellist Emanuel Feuermann and pianist Arthur Rubinstein as well as a later collaboration with Rubinstein and cellist Gregor Piatigorsky, with whom he recorded trios by Maurice Ravel, Tchaikovsky, and Felix Mendelssohn.

Heifetz also recorded some string quintets with violinist Israel Baker, violists William Primrose and Virginia Majewski, and Piatigorsky.

He also arranged a number of pieces, such as Hora Staccato by Grigoraș Dinicu, a Romanian whom Heifetz is rumoured to have called the greatest violinist he had ever heard.

Among the more uncommon discs featured one of Decca's popular artists, Bing Crosby, in the "Lullaby" from Benjamin Godard's opera Jocelyn and Where My Caravan Has Rested (arranged by Heifetz and Crosby) by Hermann Löhr (1871–1943); Decca's studio orchestra was conducted by Victor Young on July 27, 1946, session.

Despite the fact that the Holocaust had occurred less than ten years earlier and a last-minute plea from Ben-Zion Dinur, the Israeli Minister of Education, the defiant Heifetz argued, "The music is above these factors … I will not change my program.

He and his students at the University of Southern California protested smog by wearing gas masks, and in 1967, he converted his Renault passenger car into an electric vehicle.

[37] Heifetz taught the violin extensively, holding master classes first at UCLA, then at the University of Southern California, where the faculty included renowned cellist Gregor Piatigorsky and violist William Primrose.

During his teaching career Heifetz taught, among others, Erick Friedman, Pierre Amoyal, Adam Han-Gorski, Rudolf Koelman, Endre Granat, Teiji Okubo, Eugene Fodor, Paul Rosenthal, Ilkka Talvi and Ayke Agus.

[11] Heifetz died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California, on December 10, 1987, at the age of 86 following a fall in his home.

The Heifetz Tononi violin, used at his 1917 Carnegie Hall debut, was left in his will to Sherry Kloss, his Master-Teaching Assistant, with "one of my four good bows".

[38] The famed Guarneri is now in the San Francisco Legion of Honor Museum, as instructed by Heifetz in his will, and may only be taken out and played "on special occasions" by deserving players.

He was head of marketing for the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Hollywood Bowl, and the chief financial officer of Paramount Pictures' Worldwide Video Division.

[42] Heifetz played a featured role in the movie They Shall Have Music (1939), directed by Archie Mayo and written by John Howard Lawson and Irmgard von Cube.

He later appeared in the film, Carnegie Hall (1947), performing an abridged version of the first movement of Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto, with the orchestra led by Fritz Reiner.