Kolja Blacher studied violin at the Juilliard School in New York with Dorothy DeLay and later with Sándor Végh in Salzburg. He has performed worldwide with leading orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic, the Munich Philharmonic, the NDR Symphony Orchestra, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig, the Orchestra di Santa Cecilia, and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. He has collaborated with renowned conductors including Claudio Abbado, Kirill Petrenko, Vladimir Jurowski, Dmitry Kitayenko, Mariss Jansons, Matthias Pintscher, Markus Stenz, Joseph Swensen, Simone Young, and Asher Fisch, to name just a few.

His repertoire spans works for solo violin from Bach to Berio, the great violin concertos of the classical and romantic periods, as well as contemporary pieces for violin and orchestra (e.g. by Magnus Lindberg, Kurt Weill, Hans Werner Henze, and Bernd Alois Zimmermann).

A major focus of his artistic activity over the past ten years has been the increasingly in-demand “play-conduct” format, with appearances as soloist and conductor with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, the Taiwan Philharmonic Orchestra, the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, the Dresden Philharmonic, the Bochum Symphony Orchestra, and the Orchestra of the Komische Oper Berlin. This performance practice has gained momentum around the globe – from San Antonio to Kuala Lumpur to Paris.

He also regularly conducts in long-term collaborations with orchestras such as the Norrlands Opera, South Denmark Philharmonic, Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz, Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano, Carlo Felice Genova, Orchestra Toscanini Parma, Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Taiwan National Symphony, Osaka Philharmonic, Kanagawa Philharmonic Orchestra, Bochum Symphony Orchestra, Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, Kuopio Symphony Orchestra, among many others. Starting in 2026, the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra is planning several CD productions under Kolja Blacher’s direction, beginning with Strauss’ Metamorphosen and Hartmann’s Concerto funebre.                                                                       

Kolja Blacher is  „First  Guest Conductor“ of the Kuopio Symphomy Orchstra.

Kolja Blacher has released numerous award-winning recordings (including the Diapason d’Or), among them collaborations with Claudio Abbado, with whom he shared a longstanding artistic partnership from their time together with the Berlin Philharmonic and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra. In autumn 2013, his recording of Schönberg’s Violin Concerto with the Gürzenich Orchestra under Markus Stenz was released, and it promptly topped the German Record Critics’ Award’s Quarterly Critics’ Choice 3/2015 in the “Orchestral Music” category.

Following his professorship in Hamburg, he accepted a position at the Hochschule für Musik “Hanns Eisler” in Berlin. Blacher grew up in Berlin, where he still lives with his family. He also served as concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic for six years before fully devoting himself to his solo career.

Kolja Blacher plays a 1730 Stradivarius violin, generously loaned to him by Mrs. Kimiko Powers.