Education
BM, Oberlin Conservatory of Music
Biography
Sibbi Bernhardsson ’95 began playing violin at the age of 5 in his native Iceland. During his 17-year tenure as a member of the Pacifica Quartet, he performed over 90 concerts a year worldwide in many of the leading concert halls in the United States, Europe, and Japan, including Wigmore Hall, the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, and New York’s Alice Tully Hall and Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Bernhardsson has performed at festivals including the Edinburgh Festival, Ravinia, Music@Menlo, and the Iceland Art Festival. Collaborations include those with Menahem Pressler, Yo-Yo Ma, Jörg Widmann, the Emerson Quartet, and members of the Guarneri and Cleveland Quartets.
He has appeared on television on the Tonight Show, Saturday Night Live, and the MTV Europe Music Awards with award-winning rock artist Björk.
Bernhardsson gives regular recitals and master classes in Iceland and in the United States. He has appeared as a soloist with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra and the Reykjavik Chamber Orchestra. His teachers include Gudny Gudmundsdottir, Almita and Roland Vamos, Matias Tacke and Shmuel Ashkenasi.
He previously served on the faculty at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music and the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. He also was an artist in residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Awards and Recognition
With the Pacifica Quartet, he received several honors including a Grammy Award, Musical America Ensemble of the Year, and the Avery Fisher Career Grant.