Adrián Varela

1st Violin

Adrian took up the violin aged 7 by chance, when a local music teacher offered him a free lesson, due to a pupil no-show. He decided to become a professional musician in the middle of a 2nd-year algebra lecture at an engineering university. He got up, left, and never looked back.

Portrait of Adrián Varela

Adrian took up the violin aged 7 by chance, when a local music teacher offered him a free lesson, due to a pupil no-show. He decided to become a professional musician in the middle of a 2nd-year algebra lecture at an engineering university. He got up, left, and never looked back.

Formerly Conductor and Artistic Director of the Polish National Youth Orchestra, concertmaster of Uruguay’s National Symphony Orchestra, and Director of Music at de Montfort University, Adrian studied violin in Detroit, Montevideo, Buenos Aires, and London (Zerounian, Casale, Spiller, Harvey, Hattori, Gruenberg), and conducting at Interlochen and Santa Fe (Maazel, Montenegro). He holds a Master’s degree from the University of London in pop, rock, and classical cross-genre performance, and diplomas in postgraduate performance (DipRAM) & pedagogy (LRAM) from the Royal Academy of Music.

An artist with a strong sense of social justice, a hallmark dating back to his hammering of the Berlin Wall on New Year’s Eve in 1989, Adrian is a conductor and specialist pedagogue linking artistic output, technical practice, and well-being. As a creative producer, his debut empathetic short film as writer, director, producer & conductor, ‘Songs of Isolation’, financed by the Arts Council England, reached an estimated 700,000 people upon release.

Adrian’s fluency in different musical genres has resulted in work with artists as wide-ranging as Placebo, Paquito D’Rivera, and Love Ssega. As a composer, his original works and arrangements have been performed live worldwide by international orchestras including the Philharmonia, and broadcast by the BBC, TokyoFM, and Polish & Uruguayan national radios. He is the Conductor and Artistic Director of the One Tree Hill Sinfonia, London.

Apart from its sound, what Adrian most enjoys about the Philharmonia since joining in 2002 are its speed of reaction and adaptability, which he likens to a murmuration of starlings. For Adrian, what makes the Philharmonia most special is its refinement without aloofness.

adrianvarela.com

Biografía en español

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Watch a film featuring Adrián Varela:

Violinist Adrián Varela on 20 years with the Philharmonia