Violin & tuba – unique!

Dreams are dreams – but this thing really happened. The violin and the tuba could not be more different as instruments, but the biographies of Benjamin Schmid and Andreas Martin Hofmeir have some similarities: both have been award-winners at the ECHO Classics (Hofmeir was the first tuba player ever to win one); both are professors at the renowned Salzburg Mozarteum; and both are equally at home in classical music and in jazz.

Benjamin Schmid is “one of the most valuable of today’s golden-age-violinists”. He has performed on the world’s major stages with renowned orchestras such as the Vienna Philharmonic, the Philharmonia Orchestra London, the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam under conductors such as Christoph von Dohnanyi, David Zinman, Seiji Ozawa or Valery Gergiev. As one of the most versatile of today's violinists Schmid combines his qualities as a soloist, the extraordinary broad range of his repertoire – in addition to the usual works he also plays the violin concertos by Hartmann, Gulda, Korngold, Muthspiel, Szymanowski, Lutoslawski and Reger – with his remarkable skill in jazz improvisation.

Andreas Martin Hofmeir, who at present is certainly one of the best and most versatile instrumentalists, loves to commute between different genres: As a soloist in classical music he performed with the Münchner Philharmoniker, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Konzerthausorchester Berlin, NDR Radiophilharmonie, Bruckner Orchester Linz, Orchester des Nationaltheaters Mannheim and many others. But he is not only a sought-after soloist and chamber musician, Hofmeir also founded the popular Bavarian band LaBrassBanda and has been standing on stage as a cabaret artist for seventeen years.