Iris Icellioglu

Born in Izmir, violist Iris Icellioglu discovered her passion for the viola at the age of nine. She began her studies at the Dokuz Eylül College of Music in Izmir with Pinar Dinçer and continued with Prof. Dr. Çetin Aydar and Prof. Hartmut Lindemann. She completed her bachelor's degree with distinction in 2016. She began her master's degree with Prof. Roland Glassl and later continued it with Prof. Pauline Sachse at the Lübeck University of Music, where she successfully graduated. She has had the opportunity to take part in chamber music masterclasses with eminent musicians such as Emile Cantor, Ruşen Güneş, Ron Ephrat, Máté Szücs and Eberhard Feltz. During her studies in Germany, she was awarded the Yehudi Menuhin Live Music Now Scholarship with three different chamber music groups.
Between 2015 and 2017, she was a permanent member of the Karsiyaka Chamber Orchestra. She was later part of the Orchestra Academy of the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra and performed as a guest artist with orchestras such as the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra and the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra.
She has performed as a soloist with the Dokuz Eylül Academic Orchestra and the Karsiyaka Chamber Orchestra. As part of the 45th Istanbul Festival, she won the “Festival seeks its young soloist” competition and performed as a soloist with the DESO under the direction of Hakan Şensoy.
Icellioglu has been a permanent member of the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra since 2022. She has worked with conductors such as Jonathan Nott, Vasily Petrenko, Alan Gilbert, Kent Nagano, Vladimir Jurowsky and Ádám Fischer and has performed as an orchestral and chamber musician in world-famous concert halls such as Carnegie Hall, Berlin Philharmonie, Elbphilharmonie, Suntory Hall and Sala São Paulo.