Joel Blido
Joel Blido was born in 1998 into a family of musicians. He began taking cello lessons at the age of 4. He had his debut as a soloist with the chamber orchestra Bad Mergentheim at the age of 10. At the TONALi competition 2018 he won the Weinberg special price for his outstanding performance of contemporary music. In 2019 he won a scholarship and a special prize at the German national music competition. He also won a first prize at the „Giovanni Musicisti“-competition in Treviso, Italy.
At the age of 10 he was accepted into the Pre-College of the University of Music Würzburg, into the class of Orfeo Mandozzi. He started his Bachelor-studies at the age of 15. Since 2015 he studies in Weimar in the class of Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt. In addition he also regularly works with David Geringas. 2014 he invited Joel to play with him in the Philharmonie Berlin. They have played several concerts as a duo since then. Joel has participated in a lot of masterclasses with renowned cellists such as Jens-Peter Maintz, Michael Sanderling, Raphael Wallfisch, Pieter Wispelwey, Istvan Vardai, David Grigorian, Zvi Plesser and Hillel Zori.
As a soloist he played with conductors such as Alessandro Cadario, Peter Vrabel, Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt, Desar Sulejmani and orchestras such as the Albanian national radio-television orchestra, the Opera orchestra Tirana, the chamber orchestra Pforzheim, and the Heinrich-Heine symphonic orchestra. He played many concerts across Europe, at festivals such as the Interlaken Classics Festival, the Usedom Music Festival, the Accademia Chigiana Siena, the Feuchtwanger Piano Festival, The Durres Chamber Fest (Albania), and the Different Trains Festival Tirana.
In 2017 he received a „diploma di merito“ from the Accademia Chigiana Siena for his exceptional artistic involvement.