Gareth Lubbe
viola and voice

Born 1976 in Johannesburg, Gareth Lubbe received his first musical education on the Piano and Violin at the age of four. He made his first orchestral violin debut in Johannesburg when he was nine years of age afterwhich he received numerous prizes at national and regional competitions. He also performed as pianist with the SABC orchestra and conducted the Johannesburg Symphony Orchestra. After violin and Piano studies in Pretoria, he went on to study in Germany where he did his first degree in Violin with Gorjan Kosuta in Cologne whilst receiving Chamber Music lessons from the Alban Berg Quartett. He later did his masters in Viola with Barbara Westphal in Luebeck. He has since appeared as soloist and chamber musician with ensembles throughout Europe, America and Asia and has worked regularly with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, performing and recording with conductors such as Claudio Abbado and Daniel Harding amongst others.
Since 1996, Mr Lubbe has worked in close collaboration with the New Zealand born multi-instrumentalist and composer Hayden Chisholm, with whom he has performed in various parts of the world. In 2001 they were commisioned to create the music for Schiller’s „Mary Stuart“ at the Deutsche Schauspielhaus in Hamburg.

He is also a member of the ensemble „Gelberklang“, known in Europe for their work in the contemporary music scene and workshops on free improvisation with young classical musicians. They have recorded for BBC and other major European radio stations.

As acclaimed overtonesinger, Mr Lubbe performs and gives workshops around the world. In 2005 he was invited by the Goethe Institute to perform at an ethnic festival in the Altay mountains of southern Siberia where this polyphonic vocal technique has always been a vital element of their folk music. Together with „Doha“, a trio with Claudio Bohorquez and Chisholm, he recorded an album benefitting the „Great Stupa of Dharmakaya“  in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.

In 2006 and 2007, Gareth Lubbe worked as principal violist with Phillip Herreweghe in his Royal Flemish Philharmonic Orchestra.
He currently lives in Leipzig, where he is co-principal violist in the  Gewandhaus Orchestra with Riccardo Chailly and in April 2009 will take up a teaching post in the music conservatory „Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy“.