Julia Rebekka Adler

Julia Rebekka Adler (née Mai; born 1978) is a German viola and viola d'amore player.

Early life and education

Julia Rebekka Mai was born in 1978 in Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, West Germany.

She started playing viola at the age of six with Ute-Christine Elfert in Freiburg. Having won first prize at Jugend musiziert (Federal German competition for young musicians), she was invited to participate at the Interlochen Arts Camp and the Aspen Music Festival and School.

From 1994 to 2000, she studied with Kim Kashkashian, Johannes Lüthy, and Wolfram Christ at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg in Freiburg. In 2004, she took master classes with Walter Levin and Yuri Bashmet in Siena, Italy. She finished her soloist-studies with Hartmut Rohde at the Berlin University of the Arts with highest honors in 2007.

In 2004, she was rated best German violist in the ARD International Music Competition, receiving the Theodor Rogler Prize. She has been co-soloist of the Munich Philharmonic and was a member of the Kuss Quartet and the Ensemble Viardot. She performs with the Solistenoktett Berlin (a string octet with Latica Honda-Rosenberg and Jens Peter Maintz, among others), and plays in duo with the Russian pianist Jascha Nemtsov.

In 2009, she recorded the four viola sonatas by Mieczysław Weinberg.

Since 2016, Adler has been co-principal violist with the Munich Philharmonic, a member of the 'Berliner Solistenoktett' and a professor for viola at the Berlin University of the Arts.