About this Artist
Dubbed by critics as “a wizard of percussion,” Austrian multi-percussionist MARTIN GRUBINGER performs with many of the top orchestras at the world’s most prestigious venues. Grubinger’s repertoire is unusually broad, and ranges from solo works and chamber music with partners including pianists Ferhan and Ferzan Önder to large ensemble programs.
Grubinger has had an increasing number of works specially written for him, among them Rolf Wallin’s Das war schön!, Anders Koppel’s Concerto No. 3, Avner Dorman’s Frozen in Time, and Friedrich Cerha’s Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra, performed and recorded with the Wiener Philharmoniker under the baton of Peter Eötvös on Kairos, as well as Tan Dun’s concerto The Tears of Nature, which received its premiere this season. His well-known percussion projects, The Percussive Planet and the recently premiered Caribbean Showdown, show his versatility.
Highlights of the 2012/13 season include premieres of concertos by Tan Dun and HK Gruber, his debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Christoph Eschenbach, and an appearance with the Tonkünstler Orchestra at Schloss Grafenegg’s televised summer gala. He returns to the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig under Riccardo Chailly and is artist in residence with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra throughout the season and “artiste étoile” of the 2013 Lucerne Festival. The 2011/12 season included debuts with the Wiener Philharmoniker, the Bamberger Symphoniker, the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, and the Orquesta Sinfonica de Euskadi alongside a concert tour to Taiwan and Korea. Other milestones in his career include tours with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under Andris Nelsons and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen.
In the 2008/09 season he was named Artist in Residence of the Leipzig Gewandhaus; residencies with the Camerata Salzburg, at the Philharmonie Köln, Philharmonie München, and Wiener Konzerthaus followed. Grubinger has also appeared with the NHK Symphony Orchestra; the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra; the National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan; the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig; the NDR Sinfonieorchester Hamburg; the NDR Radiophilharmonie Hannover; and the Münchner, Hamburger, and Dresdner Philharmoniker, and Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León. In 2011, he made his U.S. debut with the Kansas City Symphony.
Regular guest appearances lead him to the Rheingau and Schleswig-Holstein Music festivals, the Bregenzer Festspiele, the Weimar Kunstfest, the Salzburg Festival, the Baden-Baden Festspielhaus, the Brass & Percussion Festival in Tokyo’s famous Suntory Hall, and the Grant Park Music Festival in Chicago.
Martin Grubinger was given the Bernstein Award by the Schleswig Holstein Musik Festival and the prestigious Jeunesses Musicales’ Würth Prize. He records exclusively for Deutsche Grammophon; his first recording, Drums ’N’ Chant (released October 2010) was soon followed by a live recording of The Percussive Planet on DVD.
Born in Salzburg, Martin Grubinger studied at the Bruckner Conservatory in Linz and at the Salzburg Mozarteum. He had already garnered attention in his youth, having appeared at several international competitions, including the second World Marimbaphone Competition held in Okaya, Japan, and at the EBU Competition in Norway.