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Biography
Viola player and viola d'amore player Julia Rebekka Adler, née Mai, was born 1978 in Heidelberg, Germany. In 2004 she was rated best German violist in the ARD International Music Competition, receiving the Theodor Rogler Prize. She has been co-soloist of the Munich Philharmonic, was member of the "Kuss Quartett" and the Ensemble Viardot and is currently playing with the Solistenoktett Berlin (a string octet with Latica Honda-Rosenberg and Jens Peter Maintz, among others), and plays in duo with the pianist Jascha Nemtsov. Since 2016 she is professor for viola at the Berlin University of the Arts
Julia Rebekka Adler started playing viola at the age of six. Having won first prize at Jugend musiziert (Federal German competition for young musicians), she was invited to participate at the Interlochen Arts Camp and the Aspen Music Festival.
Adler studied with Kim Kashkashian, Johannes Lüthy, and Wolfram Christ at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg and took master-classes with Walter Levin and Yuri Bashmet. She finished her soloist-studies with Hartmut Rohde at the Universität der Künste Berlin with highest honors. From 1992 to 1997, she held a scholarship from the Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben and she was selected artist in the Bundesauswahl junger Künstler in both 2005 and 2006. In 2002, Adler was awarded with the Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Prize for viola.
In 1994, she recorded her first CD playing the viola concerto No.1 by Darius Milhaud as soloist with the Landesjugendorchester Baden-Württemberg. Since then, she has appeared as soloist with the Baden-Badener Philharmonie, the Neue Philharmonie Westfalen, the Philharmonisches Kammerorchester München, and the Philharmonia of the Nations directed by Justus Frantz. Adler played at the Donaueschingen Festival, in projects of the Pellegrini-Quartett, and performed with artists such as Stéphane Picard, Tim Vogler, David Geringas, Antje Weithaas, Wen-Sinn-Yang, Julius Berger, Karl Leister, and Hans-Jörg Schellenberger. In 2009, she recorded the four viola sonatas by Mieczyslaw Weinberg.