Michala Petri

Michala Petri has performed more than 4000 concerts in the worlds leading festivals and Concert Halls,and has broken down the boundaries of her instrument, the recorder. 

Her repertoire spans works from the Baroque, Classicism, Romanticism and extends into contemporary and improvised music. It is precisely this versatility that lies behind her special appeal as an artist. 

Her collaboration in the 90s on two cds with Keith Jarrett, gave her a latent interest in the art of improvisation, which is partly required in Baroque music, though within the narrow borders of the rules of that time. The collaboration was initiated by Keith Jarrett, who heard Michala play in concert at New Yorks Lincoln Centre and suggested that they at some point played something together – which let to two albums of Bach Sonatas and Handel Sonatas. Recently she has taken up playing fully improvised concerts, amongst others with Benjamin Koppel and Carsten Dahl. 

She has received the Leonie Sonning Music Prize, Europa Musicale Soloist Prize, three times the German ECHO KLASSIK Award, amongst others. She has recorded more than 70 cds, several having been Grammy-nominated. 

Artists with whom she has collaborated include Keith Jarrett, Sir Neville Marriner, James Galway, Gidon Kremer, Heinz Holliger, Henryk Szeryng, Pinchas Zukermann, Maurice Andre, Joshua Bell, Mahan Esfahani and Claudio Abbado. Among composers having composed for her are Sir Malcolm Arnold, Gordon Jacob, Per Nørgaard, Vagn Holmboe, Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen, Olav Anton Thommessen, Sunleif Rasmussen, Bent Sørensen, Steven Stucky, Joan Albert Amargos, Chen Yi, Bright Cheng, Ander and Thomas Koppel and Daniel Børtz. 

photo: Søren Solkær, from booklet