Violin 2025: Jury
Sibbi Bernhardsson, Oberlin Conservatory violin professor and Cooper Competition director
Peter Herresthal, violin professor at the Oslo Academy; visiting professor at the Royal College of Music in London and at NYU Steinhard School in New York
Xie Nan, professor of violin and chairman of the violin department at the Central Conservatory of Music; vice president of the China Musicians’ Association’s Violin Academy
Jury Biographies
Sibbi Bernhardsson, Director and Jury Chair
Icelandic violinist Sibbi Bernhardsson joined the Oberlin Conservatory faculty in 2017 after performing for the previous 17 years with the Pacifica Quartet, with which he won a Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance, Musical America Ensemble of the Year honors, and the Avery Fisher Career Grant.
As a member of the Pacifica Quartet, Bernhardsson appeared in more than 90 concerts worldwide each year, including engagements in Wigmore Hall (London), the Vienna Konzerthaus, Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), Suntory Hall (Tokyo), Alice Tully Hall and Carnegie Hall (New York), and other major venues. He has performed at the Edinburgh Festival, Ravinia, Music@Menlo, and the Reykjavík Arts Festival, and has collaborated with Menahem Pressler, Yo-Yo Ma, Jörg Widmann, Lynn Harrell, Leon Fleisher, the Emerson String Quartet, Johannes Moser, and members of the Guarneri and Cleveland quartets. His television appearances include The Tonight Show, Saturday Night Live, and the MTV Europe Music Awards with Icelandic artist Björk. He appears on 16 recordings with the Pacifica Quartet and has recorded the violin music of Þorkell Sigurbjörnsson and the sonatas for violin and piano by Franz Schubert.
Bernhardsson serves as director of the Cooper International Violin Competition at Oberlin and as artistic director of Iceland’s Harpa International Music Academy. He gives regular concerts and master classes in the United States, Europe, and Asia, and has appeared as a soloist with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, the Reykjavík Chamber Orchestra, CityMusic Cleveland, and other ensembles.
Bernhardsson is a 1995 graduate of Oberlin Conservatory. His teachers include Guðný Guðmundsdóttir, Almita and Roland Vamos, Mathias Tacke, and Shmuel Ashkenasi. He previously served on the faculty of the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University.
Award winning violinist Peter Herresthal has appeared with orchestras and ensembles world wide from 
Melbourne Symphony, with Thomas Adès conducting his Concerto at the Melbourne festival, Vienna Radio Symphony in Konzerthaus Wien, BBC Philharmonic, London Sinfonietta to numerous performances with the major Scandinavian Orchestras including Oslo and Stockholm Phil. He has recorded 16 violin concertos earning nine nominations and three Norwegian Grammys. His Nørgård recording was shortlisted for a Gramophone Award and was Editors Choice in The Strad and International Record Review. The last three seasons Peter has been touring Europe and U.S. with Kaija Saariaho's aria, 'Vers toi es si loin', written for him and more than 15 performances of her violin concerto 'Graal Théâtre', most recently recording the work for BIS and a TV production for BBC. Peter Herresthal is a Professor at the Oslo Academy, visiting Professor at the Royal College of Music, London and NYU Steinhard School, New York. He performs on a GB Guadagnini from Milan 1753.
Xie Nan is currently a professor of violin and chairman of the violin department at the
Central Conservatory of Music. She is also the vice president of the China Musicians’ Association’s Violin Academy, council member of the China Female Musicians’ Association, and adjudicator for the CCTV Piano and Violin Competition.
Xie Nan’s musical talent was unveiled at age nine when she was awarded second prize at the Guangdong Music Competition. By age 14, she had won awards at the Beijing International Youth Violin Competition. Two years later, she performed at the Wieniawski Competition in Poland and claimed another prize as well as the award for Best Performance of Wieniawski’s Works.
Xia Nan studied with professors Zhu Xiongzhen, Huang Xiaozhi, and Lin Yaoji. After obtaining her master’s degree with distinction, she continued her studies in the United States under Alice Schoenfeld at the University of Southern California. Xie Nan also received instruction and high praise from violinists Isaac Stern, Salvatore Accardo, and Pinchas Zukerman.
In 1999, she became the first violinist to record the complete 42 Capriccios of Kreutzer. She has recorded numerous solo albums including Xian Qin Wang Shi and Ma Sicong’s violin works. She is the recipient of the PRC’s Ministry of Education’s “New Century Talent” program, for which she recorded the album Brahms: Violin Sonatas 1-3 and was the first person in China to publish educational materials for these works. Her latest album, Encounters, won the Best Art Award of the 2019 Fever Disc. She has recorded several albums with the China Central Television network for international distribution.
Xie Nan’s musical career has brought her to many of the world’s stages and major musical events in such places as Great Britain, Germany, Austria, Poland, Finland, North Korea, Russia, the Netherlands, Japan, the United States, South Africa, South Korea, Thailand, as well as Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. She has appeared in concert at the Beijing International Music Festival, the Macau Arts Festival, the Shanghai Spring Music Festival, Japan’s Asia Symphonic Music Festival, the Asia Cultural Ministers’ Forum, and the CCTV Music Channel’s Third Anniversary Celebration Music Festival. She has also collaborated as a soloist with the China Philharmonic Orchestra, the China National Symphony Orchestra, the Central Opera Orchestra, the China Youth Symphony Orchestra, the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra, the Beijing Symphony Orchestra, the Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra, the Taiwan Philharmonic Orchestra, the Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra, the Finland Kuopio Symphony Orchestra, the Netherlands’ Brabants Orchestra, the Macau Orchestra, the Seoul Chamber Orchestra, the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra, the Taipei Experimental Chinese Orchestra, and many others.
Since becoming a faculty member at the Central Conservatory of Music, she has invested her passion into teaching the next generation of students, who have since claimed numerous awards in national and international competitions. She has given master classes at Yale University Music School, Boston University Music School, Singapore Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music, Xinghai Conservatory of Music, Sichuan Conservatory of Music, among others.
Dedicated to promoting Chinese music compositions, she has performed the Chinese violin concerto “Butterfly Lovers” in Vienna’s Musikverein, Netherland’s Philips Concert Hall, Japan’s Osaka Concert Hall, and the Johannesburg Concert Hall. A live recording of her concert in Vienna Musikverein was released by the China Record Corporation. She also gave performances of “Butterfly Lovers” arranged for traditional Chinese orchestra with the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra at the Hong Kong Cultural Center and the Taipei Experimental Chinese Orchestra at the Taibei National Concert Hall.