Helena Winkelman
Violinist and composer Helena Winkelman has been a member of the Callino Quartet since 2017. She is one of the most appraised and distinct musical voices of her country of origin, Switzerland. Composing and performing are of equal importance to her. As a charismatic player, she establishes a very direct connection to her audience and the promotion of fascinating new repertoire is one of her primary interests.
After winning the Pro Musicis Award in 2001 she gave her debut at Weill recital hall, New York and Salle Cortot, Paris. In 2008 she spent a year in London on a scholarship by Landis & Gyr and in 2012 she received a bursary to work for half a year in Berlin.
As well as taking part in the Musique@Marsac festival in France and the Bastad festival in Sweden, she has also performed at the Lucerne, Gstaad and Davos Music Festivals in Switzerland. For 20 years she has been a participant of IMS open chamber music festival in Prussia Cove. Being a true aficionado of intimate chamber music settings, she and her mixed group, the Camerata Variabile Basel have created their own concert series that often bridges music with social or philosophical themes.
In 2016 she was awarded the Georg Fisher prize of her native town Schaffhausen and in 2017 was the recipient of the Swiss music award.
Her music is performed around the world and is a clever and open fusion of contemporary sounds with rock music, Swiss folk music and Asian traditions.
Today she has written for almost every musical formation from choir works to orchestral and chamber music. Her music has been performed by the Arditti Quartet, the Basle Chamber Orchestra, the ASKOL/Schönberg ensemble Amsterdam, the Munich Chamber Orchestra, the Asian Art Ensemble, Ensemble Phoenix, Ensemble Musikfabrik and soloists like Nicolas Altstaedt, Thomas and Patrick Demenga, Hansheinz Schneeberger, Pekka Kuusiisto, Patricia Kopatchinskaya, Simon Höfele, Steamboat Switzerland and others.
She was composer in residence at the Lockenhaus and Ernen festivals.
Besides her teachers Roland Moser and Georg Friedrich Haas, her major musical influences were composers György Kurtag and George Benjamin, percussionist Pierre Favre, violinist Gidon Kremer and conductor Claudio Abbado with whom she worked in the Lucerne Festival Orchestra for 5 years.