Biography

Kira Elisabeth Koch was born in Berlin in 2010 and comes from a family with German, Romanian, Hungarian and Japanese roots. She started playing the violin at the age of five. She received her first violin lessons from Michiko Iiyoshi and has been taught by Michiko Feuerlein since 2017. She has been a student at the Carl-Philipp-Emanuel-Bach-Gymnasium since August 2020 and has also been a young student at the Julius Stern Institute at the University of the Arts (UdK) since 2022.

Kira is a scholarship holder of the Academy of Music in Liechtenstein and takes part in the academy's intensive weeks and activities.

Before her sixth birthday, she won the 1^st prize in “Jugend musiziert” with full points. In 2019 and 2020, further 1^st prizes followed with maximum points in “Jugend musiziert” as a soloist and in the rating for string duo in duo with piano. In 2020 and 2021, she won a 1^st prize and a sponsorship prize at the nationwide “Carl Schröder Competition” in Sondershausen. She won the 2^nd prize at the 2020 “Young Ludwig International Competition” and the 3^rd prize at the 2021 “International Kocian Competition”. She won the 1^st prize at the 2021 “Dussmann Competition” and the 1^st prize with the highest score in the state competition at “Jugend musiziert” 2022. At the international violin competition “Il piccolo violino magico 2022” she won the 3^rd prize, and in 2023, she won another 1^st prize in the IVth age group at the “Carl Schröder Competition”, a special prize for the interpretation of a contemporary work at the state competition “Jugend musiziert”, and the 1^st national prize with top points in the national competition “Jugend musiziert” in the string quartet category, as well as the highly endowed “Eduard Söring Prize” from the German Stiftung Musikleben with the Piaschawa Quartet, founded in 2022.

Despite her young age, Kira has had a number of national and international appearances as a soloist and as a chamber musician. She played with the Accademia d’Archi Arrigoni Orchestra, the FVG Orchestra Venice and the Undergroud Youth Orchestra Athens.

Since the 2022/23 season she has been concertmaster of the children's opera orchestra at the Unter den Linden State Opera.