Erick Friedman was an American violinist and music teacher. He began playing violin at age six. At age ten, he entered the Juilliard School and became a private student of Nathan Milstein and Jascha Heifetz. He also studied violin with Ivan Galamian. At age seventeen, he began studying with Heifetz at the University of Southern California. Finally, he studied composition with Mario Castelnuova-Tedesco. Concert tours took him throughout the United States and Europe. He soon gave up his concert activities in favor of teaching. In 1975, he became professor of violin at the Manhattan School of Music in New York. Later, he became head of the strings department at Southern Methodist University. Friedman accepted a professorship at Yale University, where he gave master classes until the end of his life.