Sibbi Bernhardsson

Icelandic violinist Sibbi Bernhardsson joined the faculty of Oberlin Conservatory in 2017. Before that, as a member of the Pacifica Quartet from 2000 to 2017, he performed over 90 concerts a year worldwide in many of the leading concert halls including Wigmore Hall, the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Suntory Hall, New York’s Alice Tully Hall and Carnegie Hall.
Sibbi has performed at many of the world’s most prestigious festivals including the Edinburgh
Festival, Ravinia, Music@Menlo, and the Iceland Art Festival. With the Pacifica Quartet he has
received several honors including the Grammy Award, the Musical America Ensemble of the Year, and the Avery Fisher Career Grant. Collaborations include those with Menahem Pressler, Yo-Yo Ma, Jörg Widmann, Lynn Harrell , Leon Fleisher, The Emerson quartet, Johannes Moser and members of the Guarneri and Cleveland Quartets. His television appearances include the Tonight Show, Saturday Night Live, and the MTV Europe Music Awards with award-winning rock artist Björk.
He was previously on the faculty of the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. Sibbi gives regular concerts and master classes in the USA, Europe and Asia and has appeared as a soloist with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra and the Reykjavik Chamber Orchestra, City Music of Cleveland and others.
In addition to his sixteen recordings with The Pacifica String Quartet, Sibbi has recorded the
violin music of Thorkell Sigurbjornsson for Bad Taste records and recently recorded the Sonatas for violin and piano by Franz Schubert on the Oberlin record label. Sibbi was recently appointed as the Artistic Director of The Harpa International Music Academy or HIMA and is the Director of the Cooper International Violin Competition Sibbi’s teachers include Gudny Gudmundsdottir, Almita and Roland Vamos, Matias Tacke and Shmuel Ashkenasi.