Early Life and Studies
Biss represents the third generation in a musical lineage that stretches back to his paternal grandmother Raya Garbousova (for whom Samuel Barber composed his Cello Concerto). His parents are the Israeli-born violinist Miriam Fried and the violist Paul Biss. He studied at Indiana University with Evelyne Brancart and at The Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia with Leon Fleisher, thus extending another musical lineage - Fleisher was linked via Artur Schnabel to a tradition that descended directly from Beethoven himself, handed down through Carl Czerny and Theodor Leschetizky. Interviewed by the New York Times in 2011 in the run-up to Biss' Carnegie Hall debut recital, Leon Fleisher said of his pupil:
His ability and interest go for things of transcendence and sublimeness. That made a great impression on me. He took a very healthy road that started with chamber music, both with his mother and then more extensively at places like Ravinia and Marlboro, and he got to be known by the elders in the profession as somebody to look out for.
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