BackProfile
Ásdís Valdimarsdóttir
Viola
Ásdís Valdimarsdottir is an internationally renowned Violist, Chamber Musician, Viola Teacher, and Chamber Music Coach, currently on the faculty for Viola and Chamber Music of the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. She joined the class of Paul Doktor at the Juilliard School in New York when she was 18 and finished 5 years later with a Bachelor and a Master degree, having also worked with William Lincer, Felix Galimir and the Juilliard Quartet. She continued her studies in Detmold, Germany with Nobuko Imai, who’s hugely inspiring teaching and musicianship remains a big influence on her. During her studies in Germany Ásdís had the good fortune to play with the Deutsche Kammer Akademie Neuss, a highly acclaimed string ensemble led by the cellist Johannes Goritski.
Ásdís returned to America to be a founding member of the Miami String Quartet, with whom she won the first prize of the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition. She ultimately preferred to live in Europe, so in 1990 she became the principal viola of the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen (DKP) and moved back to Germany. With the DKP she worked closely with many great artists, such as Heinrich Schiff, Gidon Kremer, Walter Levine and Sandor Vegh. In 1995 Ásdís joined the Chilingirian String Quartet (CSQ) and was their violinist until 2003. With the CSQ she travelled extensively, made numerous CD and radio recordings and was in residence as a Chamber Music Coach at the Royal College of Music in London. She left the Quartet when her daughter was 2 years old; finding motherhood and the demands of the internationally travelling Quartet impossible to combine in a satisfactory way. Since then she has become increasingly passionate about teaching; first holding a professorship at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester for 7 years before eventually moving all her regular teaching to the Royal Conservatory The Hague. For several seasons she was for the viola professor at the International Masterclass in Apeldoorn along with Philippe Graffin, Colin Carr, Charles Neidich, Pascal Devoyon and Gary Hoffmann. Over the years she has been invited to many prestigious music festivals around the world, such as Marlboro, Kuhmo, Lockenhaus, Davos, Berliner Festspiele, Prussia Cove, Bath, St. Nazaire, Prades and Festival Inverno in Brazil where she has performed and taught. She has made numerous recordings with her various ensembles, and more recently, solo recordings with Zefir Records in the NL and HR recordings in Spain. Her Edition of the Telemann Gamba Fantasies arranged for viola was published in 2024 by Billaudot in Paris.
Ásdís is currently based in Amsterdam. She is a member of The Brunsvik String Trio and The Erard Ensemble and enjoys a varied career between teaching, solo, chamber music and orchestral engagements as guest principal viola of the Scottish Chamber orchestra, Frankfurt Radio Orchestra and others, and often joins the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. Ásdís is a member of the ECMA faculty and coaches quartets on Musethica, a scheme where young professional String Quartets play in non concert hall settings, such a s prisons and hospitals. One of her big passions is to help musicians find more freedom in their playing and to prevent and help resolve playing related injuries. For several years she has been involved in something called Body Mapping and is qualified to teach it. Body Mapping is an in depth exploration of our skeletal and muscular systems and how we can find freedom in our movements.
