Photo: Julia Wesely
Lena Fankhauser
Artistic Director · Co-founder
Lena Fankhauser is a violist of Trinidadian-Swiss heritage, born in Montreal, Quebec. She began playing the violin at the age of four and studied with David Cerone in the Young Artists Program (Cleveland Institute of Music) and began her undergraduate studies at McGill University in Montreal before switching to the viola. She holds both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from The Juilliard School in New York, where she studied on a full scholarship.
She moved to Austria for postgraduate studies with viola professor Thomas Riebl at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg and subsequently played with the Camerata Salzburg. Lena has toured worldwide across numerous genres and played in many halls, including New York’s Carnegie Hall, Suntory Hall in Tokyo and the Royal Albert Hall in London. She was also a soloist with the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra for Danny Elfman’s “Wolfman Suite” at Hollywood in Vienna.
A passionate chamber musician, Lena founded a chamber music festival in Bad Ischl and (CH)AMBER, an association for new chamber music. She has played at the Proms, the Salzburg Festival and in the orchestras of the Vienna State Opera, Vienna Volksoper, Klangforum Wien and the Munich Philharmonic, and regularly performs with the UK-based Chineke! Orchestra. She is a member of the Koehne Quartet, a regular presence on the stage of the Burgtheater. She is a founding member and manager of the film orchestra Big Island Orchestra Vienna and a member of the Vienna Viola Society.
