Irina Medvedeva is a Russian violinist, international competition prizewinner, and professor at the Conservatory and the Higher School of Arts in Toulouse, France. She was born in Moscow on 19 March 1951. Her father, Alexei Medvedev, was a lawyer, and her mother, Lyudmila Medvedeva, taught French. Her paternal grandfather was an aeronautical engineer and amateur musician who made folk instruments, while her maternal great-grandfather, the pianist Mikhail Smetannikov, was concertmaster at the Mariinsky Theatre and an assistant to Alexander Glazunov. Medvedeva inherited his library of piano scores, which helped her master the piano with ease.
Her artistic abilities appeared early: she sang, danced, and staged improvised theatrical performances. In 1958 she entered the Gnesins Secondary Special Music School to study violin with Zinaida Gilels. In 1969 she became a student at the Moscow Tchaikovsky State Conservatory, where she studied with Yuri Yankelevich and his assistant, the violinist Irina Bochkova. After Yankelevich's death, she continued in the class of Leonid Kogan, graduating from the conservatory in 1975 and completing postgraduate assistantship training in 1977.
Medvedeva won second prize at the All-Union Violin Competition in 1972. At the Long-Thibaud Competition in Paris in 1975, she received second prize as well as a prize for the best performance of Maurice Ravel's Tzigane. She won second prize at the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels in 1976, where the required work was Jacqueline Fontyn's Concert Fantasy, and took third prize at the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1978. From 1972 onward, she has performed solo and symphonic concerts in the Soviet Union and abroad, including in Bulgaria, Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Korea, Belgium, France, Spain, and Switzerland.
Her recordings include violin concertos by Alexander Glazunov, with Georges Octors conducting; Anton Arensky, with Vladimir Kozhukhar conducting; and Henryk Wieniawski, with Valery Gergiev conducting. She has also recorded Georgy Dmitriev's Nicolo for violin and piano, Yuri Levitin's 24 Preludes for solo violin, Sergei Prokofiev's Five Melodies for violin and piano, and Prokofiev's Violin Sonatas Nos. 1 and 2 with the pianist and composer Boris Petrov. The latter disc received the highest distinction from the European magazine Diapason.
From 1977 to 1982, Medvedeva taught violin at the Central Music School, and from 1982 to 1990 she taught at the Moscow Tchaikovsky State Conservatory. She was professor at the Bourgoin-Jallieu Conservatory in France from 1991 to 2007, and from 2007 has been professor at the Toulouse Conservatory and Higher School of Arts. She has served as an adviser for violin teachers preparing for diploma examinations, a competition juror, and a master-class professor. Her students work in Russia, Ukraine, Austria, Belgium, France, Switzerland, Germany, and the United States.