Alex Greffin Klein
(violin)
Born in France to a long lineage of musicians, Alex Greffin Klein enters the Postgraduate course at the Royal College of Music in London in 1997, in the class of renowned Professor Felix Andriewsky. In 1999 and 2000 she obtains the Postgraduate Diploma in Performance and the Postgraduate Diploma in Advanced Performance, solo and chamber music pathway. Passionate about chamber music, she completes a string quartet Postgraduate course with Walter Levin at the Basel Hochschule für Musik and undertakes further musical education with Günter Pichler (Alban Berg Quartet) and György Kurtag, who will say of her: “Alexandra Greffin has a high level of individual accomplishment and excellent chamber music skills, to which must be added the significant deepening of her artistic voice. She is an excellent violinist and an insightful, complete musician”. In 2002 she joins the Benaim String Quartet. In less than two years, she receives several international prizes with her colleagues, including 3rd prize at the ARD International Competition in Munich, the Bordeaux International Competition for String Quartet and the Special Prize of the Mozarteum in Salzburg. She is then invited to various prestigious chamber music festivals and series, among them the Salzburg Festival (Austria), the Festival de l'Orangerie de Sceaux and Reims' Flâneries musicales, the Arsenal of Metz, the Centre Georges Pompidou, Hôtel des Invalides and Salle Cortot in Paris (France), Munich's Herkulessaal (Germany), Zurich's Tonhalle (Switzerland), the Dias da Musica Festival in Lisbon (Portugal), the Reina Sofia Auditorium in Madrid (Spain), the School of Dramatic Arts Theater in Moscow (Russia), Osaka's Izumi Hall, Tokyo's Opera City (Japan), the Grand Theater of Hong Kong (China), Djakarta's GBB Theater (Indonesia), Tel-Aviv's Enav Cultural Center, Haïfa's Rapaport Hall (Israel) and Boston's Jordan Hall (USA). Alex shares her passion for chamber music with artists like Gérard Poulet, Eric-Maria Couturier, Sonia Wieder Atherton, Julius Berger, Lyonel Schmit, Radovan Vlatkovic, Miguel Da Silva (Ysaye Quartet), Denis Pascal, Delphine Bardin, Edna Stern, Juan Jose Mosalini, the Weinberger Kammerorchester in Switzerland, the Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa in Japan and David Grimal's ensemble Les Dissonances in France. In 2009 Alex G. Klein creates with the cellist Sonia Wieder Atherton the Ensemble Niguna. The same year she is appointed solo violin of the Texto Ensemble and in 2010 she founds the Phidias String Quartet, giving its Asian debut tour in May 2011. Passionate about Contemporary music, Alex is invited in 2006 by the British Pro-Bio Foundation to take part of a Masterclass with the Arditti Quartet in the Hindemith Center in Blonay (Switzerland) and will later share with the Arditti Quartet a concert at the Klangspuren Festival (Austria). She now devotes an important part of her career to promoting Contemporary music, working closely with composers Pascal Dusapin, Philippe Hurel, Gérard Pesson, Sofia Goubaïdoulina and Helmut Lachenmann, among others. As a soloist of the Ensemble Cairn, she appeared at the Darmstadt Festival in 2010, performed a cycle of Gérard Pesson World Premieres at the 104 in Paris and received in 2012 ‘5 Diapasons’ for her recording of Raphaël Cendo's string quartet, In vivo. Invited by the Ensemble Alternance, Alexandra performed Night Light of the same Raphaël Cendo in the IRCAM Manifeste Festival. In 2012 she is appointed soloist of L'Itinéraire and the Ensemble Court Circuit, with which she will give a US Tour in March 2013. Alexandra Greffin plays a Sebastian Klotz violin dating from 1756.
www.alexgreffinklein.com