Vita

In 2022, Laura Zarina published the art video with the longest fugue for solo violin (C major) by J. S. Bach on YouTube. In an experimental way, Laura Zarina took over the violin part and sang the various chorales discovered by Prof. Helga Thoene in four voices.

Three years earlier (2019) Laura Zarina released the violin concerto by the Latvian-Canadian composer Janis Kalnins (1904-2000) with Canadian Music Centre. The work was written while fleeing at the end of the Second World War and was thought to have disappeared for almost 50 years. This CD recording is the first recording, which was also recorded by Laura Zarina after the first performance in her home country Latvia.

Even during her studies in Latvia and in Germany (Professor Ulf Wallin), Laura Zarina performed in concerts internationally. Master classes led her throughout Europe and the US to Mihaela Martin, Miriam Fried, Thomas Brandis, Yuzuko Horigome, Bernhard Forck, Renaud Capuçon, Igor Oistrakh and to the Tokyo String Quartet.

She received additional artistic input at the International Music Academy Switzerland 2011 with Seiji Ozawa, Robert Mann, Pamela Frank, Nobuko Imai and Sadao Harada, as well as through her collaboration with Menahem Pressler at Villa Musica Mainz.

Zarina has received multiple awards in national and international competitions, most recently the Villa Musica Young Performer’s Prize and a special prize for her Schubert interpretation at the international „Premio Rodolfo Lipizer“ Competition in Gorizia, Italy.

As a solo violinist, Zarina gives concerts with the Canadian Opera Company, the National Latvian Symphony Orchestra, the National Latvian Opera Orchestra, the Liepaja Symphony Orchestra, the Estonian Symphony Orchestra, the Mainz Chamber Orchestra and the North German Philharmonic Orchestra Rostock.

As a chamber musician, Zarina has been a guest at various festivals such as LaMusica in Sarasota, Florida (under the leadership of Bruno Giuranna); the Montebello Festival and the Engadin Festival, Switzerland; the „Rencontres de Musique de Chambre“ in Chambéry, France (under the leadership of R. Capuçon); the Progetto Martha Argerich in Lugano, Switzerland; the Hohenlohe Culture Summer, the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival, the Bad Hersfeld Festival and the Bach Festival of Hesse/ Thuringia, Germany, among others.

Her chamber music collaborators include artistic personalities such as Bruno Giuranna, Antonio Meneses, Marie-Elisabeth Hecker, Eva Bindere, Federico Agostini, José Franch- Ballester, Jonathan Aner, Lilit Grigoryan, Denis Kozhukhin and Heike Matthiesen, among others.

Laura Zarina plays an Antonio Gragnani violin.

After completing a second master’s degree – in instrumental pedagogy – at the Musikhochschule Frankfurt (HfMdK), she accepted a teaching position for violin at the Dr. Hochs Conservatory in Frankfurt and in 2022 at the University of the Arts in Berlin (UdK).