Jörg Widmann

Jörg Widmann studied clarinet at the Academy for Music in Munich with Gerd Starke and later with Charles Neidich at the Juilliard School in New York. At the age of eleven he began to take his first composition lessons and continued subsequently his studies with Wilfried Hiller and Hans Werner Henze and later Heiner Goebbels and Wolfgang Rihm.

As clarinettist Widmann's great passion is dedicated to the chamber music and he is regularly performing with partners such as Tabea Zimmermann, Heinz Holliger, András Schiff, Christine Schäfer and Gidon Kremer. He meets great success as a soloist in orchestral concerts in Germany and abroad (e.g. with the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, DSO Berlin, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Irish Chamber Orchestra), working with conductors such as Christoph von Dohnanyi, Sylvain Cambreling, Christoph Eschenbach, David Zinman and Kent Nagano. Several new clarinet concertos have been dedicated to Widmann, including works by Wolfgang Rihm, Aribert Reimann und Heinz Holliger.

He was composer- and artist-in-residence of the Salzburg Festival, the Lucerne Festival, the Cologne Philharmonic Orchestra and the Vienna Konzerthaus, followed by the Cleveland Orchestra throughout 2010/11.

In 2001, he was appointed as professor of clarinet at the Freiburg Staatliche Hochschule fí¼r Musik (University of Freiburg) where he also got the professor ship of composition in 2009. Jörg Widmann has received numerous national and international awards for his cultural works.