Biography
Icelandic Grammy Award-winning violinist Sibbi Bernhardsson is internationally known as a chamber musician, soloist, and educator. As a member of the Pacifica Quartet from 2000 to 2017, he won a Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance, Musical America Ensemble of the Year award, and the Avery Fisher Career Grant. With the Pacifica Quartet, he performed over 90 concerts a year worldwide in many of the leading concert halls including Wigmore Hall (London), the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), Suntory Hall (Tokyo), Alice Tully Hall and Carnegie Hall (New York). Bernhardsson has performed at many of the world’s most prestigious festivals including the Edinburgh Festival, Ravinia, Tanglewood, Music Academy of the West, Music@Menlo, Aspen Music Festival and the Iceland Art Festival. Collaborations include those with Menahem Pressler, Yo-Yo Ma, Jörg Widmann, Lynn Harrell, Leon Fleisher, the Emerson Quartet, Johannes Moser, Marc-André Hamelin, and members of the Guarneri and Cleveland Quartets. His television appearances include The Tonight Show, Saturday Night Live, and the MTV Europe Music Awards with award-winning rock artist Björk.
Bernhardsson is artistic director of Harpa International Music Academy (HIMA) and director and jury chair of the Cooper International Violin Competition. In the summer, he teaches at the Music Academy of the West, Encore Chamber Music Institute, Tanglewood Music Center, and HIMA. Bernhardsson gives regular concerts and master classes in the USA, Europe, and Asia and has appeared as a soloist with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra and the Reykjavik Chamber Orchestra, City Music of Cleveland, and others.
In addition to his 16 recordings with the Pacifica Quartet, Bernhardsson has recorded the violin music of Thorkell Sigurbjornsson for Bad Taste Records, the Sonatas for violin and piano by Franz Schubert and the Sonatas for violin and piano op.23 and 24 by Beethoven on the Leaf Music label.
He was previously on the faculty of the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music and the University of Illinois. Bernhardsson's teachers include Gudny Gudmundsdottir, Almita and Roland Vamos, Matias Tacke, and Shmuel Ashkenasi.
