Kolja Blacher

Kolja Blacher studied at the Juilliard School of Music with Dorothy DeLay and with Sandor Vegh in Salzburg. He has performed as soloist all over the world, with orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic, Munich Philharmonic, NDR Symphony, Gewandhaus Leipzig, Orchestra di Santa Cecilia, and Baltimore Symphony, and with conductors including Kirill Petrenko, Vladimir Jurowski, Dimitri Kitajenko, Mariss Jansons, Matthias Pintscher, Markus Stenz, Simone Young, and Asher Fish. Blacher works regularly as conductor and soloist with the Nordic Chamber Orchestra (Sweden), the Norrlands Opera (Sweden), the South Denmark Philharmonic, the Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland Pfalz, and many others. He was a professor at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hamburg before returning to his hometown of Berlin, where he teaches at the Hochschule für Musik ‘Hanns Eisler’. A born and bred Berliner — his father was the Baltic-German composer Boris Blacher — Kolja Blacher lives with his family in Berlin. He plays a 1730 Guaneri del Gesu violin, generously on loan from Ms Kimiko Powers.