Kolja Blacher

Conductor / Violin

Kolja Blacher studied at the Juilliard School of Music with Dorothy DeLay and with Sandor Vegh in Salzburg. He performed as a soloist all over the world, with orchestras such as Berlin Philharmonic, Munich Philharmonic, NDR Symphony, Gewandhaus Leipzig, Orchestra di Santa Cecilia and Baltimore Symphony. He has worked with conductors including Kirill Petrenko, Vladimir Jurowski, Dimitri Kitajenko, Mariss Jansons, Matthias Pintscher, Markus Stenz, Simone Young and Asher Fish.

Blacher’s programmatic spectrum comprises works for solo violin from Bach to Berio, the classical-romantic core repertoire, and contemporary music for violin and orchestra (including works by Magnus Lindberg, Kurt Weill, Hans Werner Henze and Bernd Alois Zimmermann).

In the past five years „Play-Conduct“ concerts have become the new focus in Blacher’s artistic activities. He worked regularly with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Taiwan Philharmonic Orchestra, Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestra of the "Komische Oper" in Berlin.

As a conductor he will be leading all the concerts of the Chamber Orchestra of the Orchstra Sinfonica di Milano, “Giuseppe Verdi” for the next Seasons.

With the Tallin Chamber Orchestra he will be soloist and conductor for a residency in 2023/2024.

He 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.

Blacher has recorded highly acclaimed CDs (e.g. Diapason d’Or) in collaboration with Claudio Abbado, with whom he has maintained close ties since their time at the Berlin Philharmonic and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra. His CD with Schönbergs’s Violin Concerto (with Markus Stenz and Gürzenich-Orchester Köln) was released in Autumn 2013.

Kolja Blacher 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.