Nuestro Equipo

A Third Prize Winner of the “Watson Forbes” International Viola Competition 2009, Finalist in the Yuri Bashmet Viola Competition 2013 in Moscow and a semi-finalist of the 2011 Windsor Festival String Competition, violist Mihai Cocea is a student of professor Lawrence Power at the Zurcher Hochschule der Kunste. He recently has been awarded a scholarship by the Swiss Confederation to study in Zurich at ZHdK under the tutelage of Lawrence Power. Born in 1990 in Bucharest, Mihai graduated from the “George Enescu” High School as a student of professor Dumitru Ene. Since then, he has been a winner of national and international awards including the Grand Prize and Best Performance of a Contemporary Work at Icon Arts in Breaza in 2005, Second Prize at the Delius Competition, London and in 2013 he was awarded the Yuri Bashmet Special Prize at the Tertis Viola Competition in Isle of Man. He has participated in various masterclasses, with Yuri Bashmet, Ladislau Csendes, Maxim Rysanov, Marius Ungureanu, Yuval Gotlibovich, Bruno Giuranna, Lawrence Power, Razvan Popovici. Mihai has been selected by the Royal Academy of Music in London to play in a masterclass with Maxim Vengerov being the only violist chosen. He has also participated in international schemes such as: Melting Potes Musik, Nimes, France, Sampling Bukarest, Vienna, Austria, Intercultural Exchange, Beijing, China, Sermoneta, Italy, SONORO-International Chamber Music Festival. As an active chamber musician he has collaborated with: Bruno Giuranna, Mariana Sarbu, Franco Petrarchi, Diana Kettler, Razvan Popovici, David Cohen, Alexander Sitkovetsky, Bernhard Naoki Hedenborg, Yuri Zhislin and so on. As an orchestra player, he has collaborated with Youth Orchestra Wroclaw, Poland in 2005, CEY-Youth Orchestra, in 2006-2007, and EUYO-Youth Orchestra in 2008 and has been the First Principal in St Gallen Sinfonieorchester for 2 years. He has played as a soloist with international orchestras such as: Nova Russia, St. Andrews Youth Orchestra, Bristol Metropolitan Orchestra, Moscow Soloists and many more. Currently, he is the leader of the viola section in Brussels Philarmonic.