Biography

Laura Katherina Handler, born in Germany in 1998, grew up in a German-Colombian home. Laura began taking violin and singing lessons at the age of six. Piano lessons were added two years later. In 2014 Laura was accepted as a student at the Zakhar Bron Academy in Interlaken. From the winter semester of 2016, Laura attended the Pre-College of the Mozarteum University in Salzburg. In 2017 she was admitted to the Leopold Mozart Institute for Talent Promotion at the Mozarteum. In the same month, she passed her Abitur at the Pestalozzi Gymnasium in Munich. She has been a student in Professor Harald Herzl's violin class at the Mozarteum since the winter semester of 2018.

Laura is a scholarship holder of the Academy of Music in Liechtenstein, where she regularly takes part in the intensive weeks and activities of the academy.

She has received numerous awards at national and international competitions. Her most recent achievements include the 2022 “Paul Roczek Award”, the 2^nd prize at the Mozarteum University's “Concorso 21 Ruggiero Ricci” and the 2^nd prize at the “Novosibirsk International Violin Competition”, where she also was awarded a cash prize by the non-profit Star of Siberia fund for the best performance of a commissioned work by the Siberian Composer Igor Fleischer. She also received the 3^rd prize in the “Queen Sophie Charlotte Competition” and the “Schloss Mirow Medal” for the best interpretation of a classical work and the audience award. Laura is also a prize winner of the “International Anton Rubinstein Violin Competition”, the “International Competition for Young Violinists in Honor of K. Lipinski and H. Wieniawski”, the “International Competition Young Virtuosos” and the “Concorso Internazionale Luigi Zanuccoli”. At the German federal competition “Jugend Musiziert” she received a 1^st prize with maximum points and a special prize from the German Foundation for Music Life. She has also won several 1^st prizes at “Jugend Musiziert” in the categories vocal duo, violin solo, string duo and duo of piano and violin. In 2006, she won the singing competition “Musica Bavariae” with her sister and became the angelic voice in Enrico de Paruta's Holy Night.

Laura can already look back on an extensive concert career. Performances have taken her as a soloist and in chamber music with her sister to Austria and, among other places, to Switzerland, USA, Italy, Ukraine, China, Poland, Estonia, Portugal and Israel. She has performed as a soloist with the Novosibirsk Philharmonic Orchestra, the Mozarteum University Symphony Orchestra conducted by Maxim Vengerov and Ion Marin, the Taurida International Symphony Orchestra St. Petersburg, the Imola Chamber Orchestra, the Tegernsee Chamber Orchestra, the Shenzhen Youth Symphony Orchestra, the Zakhar Bron Chamber Orchestra, the Salzburg Chamber Soloists, the Dacapo Munich Chamber Philharmonic and the Munich Academic Orchestra Association. Laura has been an academic with the Munich Philharmonic since October 2021.

She is a scholarship holder of the Yehudi Menuhin organization Live Music Now, the Studienstiftung Cusanuswerk, the PE-Förderungen für Studierenden der Musik e.V. and the Villa Musica Rhineland-Palatinate Foundation, which has made the Pietro Guarneri violin "ex Schubert" (Mantua, 1702) available to her since 2022.