© Andrej Grilc
Active as a soloist as well as a chamber and orchestral musician, violinist Thomas Reif has been 1st Coordinated Concertmaster with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra since 2018. Prior to that, he has won several international awards, including 2nd Prize at the International Mozart Competition in Salzburg in 2016 and Laureate at the Queen Elisabeth International Competition in Brussels in 2015.
As a sought-after chamber musician, he played with Nils Mönkemeyer, Igor Levit, Maximilian Hornung, Clemens Hagen, Alice Sara Ott, Annika Treutler and Julia Hagen, among others. He loves early baroque music, so he founded the ensemble Breath of Zephyr with harpsichordist Alexander Gergelyfi, which shows works by Johan Helmich Roman, Francesco Maria Veracini and Jean Baptist Lully in a new, young light. But even the 20th century does not leave him indifferent. Since 2017 he has been the violinist of Cuarteto SolTango, with which he devotes himself to the Argentine tangos of the 30s to 50s and brings them closer to the classical concert audience of the renowned festivals. In 2021 their fourth studio album "Misión Tango" was released by Avi-music. As a soloist he has performed with orchestras such as the National Orchestra of Belgium, the Orchester Royal de Chambre de Wallonie, the Munich Radio Orchestra, the Las Vegas Philharmonic Orchestra, the Ensemble KNM Berlin and the Salzburg Chamber Soloists. He has worked with conductors such as Paul Meyer, Marin Alsop, Bruno Weil, Donato Cabrera, Ulrich Windfuhr and Douglas Boyd. In 2018 he made his debuts in the large halls of the Berlin Konzerthaus, the Stuttgart Liederhalle, the Nuremberg Meistersingerhalle, the Rudolf-Oetker-Halle in Bielefeld, and in 2019 in the Reynolds Hall of the Smith Center Las Vegas, USA. He is a regular guest at various festivals such as the Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Verbier Festival Academy, Davos Festival, Classique Puplinge, Festivo Aschau, Eggenfelden Klassisch and "Harriet and friends". He received his violin training from Prof. Harald Herzl (Mozarteum Salzburg), Prof. Tanja Becker-Bender (Hamburg) and Prof. Stephan Picard at the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music in Berlin. He received further formative impressions from Midori, Prof. Igor Ozim, Ferenc Rados, Prof. Gerhard Schulz, Vadim Gluzman, Prof. Thomas Riebl, Prof. Eberhard Feltz and Prof. Christian Altenburger. He plays a violin by Pietro Guarneri from around 1690, on private loan.