Roberto González-Monjas
Highly sought-after as a conductor and violinist, Roberto González-Monjas is rapidly making an international name for himself. He is chief conductor and artistic advisor of the Dalasinfoniettan in Sweden (since the 2019/20 season); chief conductor of Musikkollegium Winterthur in Switzerland (since the 2021/22 season); principal guest conductor of the Belgian National Orchestra (from the 2022/23 season); and artistic director of Iberacademy in Colombia.
His appointment in Winterthur acknowledges his longstanding and fruitful collaboration with the orchestra as a conductor, chamber musician and soloist. Highlights of the current season have included Stravinsky’s Le Sacre de printemps, Martin’s Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade. Roberto is a passionate champion of the music of living composers; his close association with composer Richard Dubugnon resulted in a new Violin Concerto, which he premiered in May 2018 with the Musikkollegium Winterthur.
Beyond his titled positions Roberto González-Monjas also nurtures a strong relationship with the Castilla y León Symphony Orchestra in his home town of Valladolid. Following highly successful collaborations in past seasons, he returned to Valladolid three times in the 2021/22 season, in programmes featuring clarinettist Andreas Ottensamer, violinist Hilary Hahn and pianist Yeol Eum Son.
Recent debuts include collaborations with the Mozarteumorchester Salzburg and Camerata Salzburg, the Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine, Orchestre national d‘Île-de-France, Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia, Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, Lahti Symphony Orchestra, Verbier Festival Junior Orchestra, Hong Kong Philharmonic, PyeongChang Festival Orchestra and the Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa.
Roberto González-Monjas began his career as a solo violinist and orchestral leader (with the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, among others) and as such still collaborates with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and Berlin Baroque Soloists. He frequently works with singers and instrumentalists including Ian Bostridge, Yuja Wang, Janine Jansen, Alexander Lonquich, Lisa Batiashvili, Fazıl Say, Reinhard Goebel, Thomas Quasthoff, András Schiff and Kit Armstrong.
Passionate and dedicated to education and nurturing new generations of talented musicians, he co-founded Iberacademy (Ibero-American Orchestral Academy) together with conductor Alejandro Posada. Most recently, Roberto embarked on a European tour with the Iberacademy Orchestra and tenor Rolando Villazón, with concerts at the Lucerne Spring Festival and the Mozarteum Foundation in Salzburg. Roberto González-Monjas also serves as a violin professor at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and regularly mentors and conducts the Guildhall School Chamber and Symphony Orchestras at the Barbican Hall in London.
Roberto González-Monjas has an impressively eclectic and wide-ranging repertoire, and his stylistic versatility and wide range of interests are also displayed in his recent recording debut with Claves Records, featuring serenades by Mozart and Othmar Schoeck.
He plays a 1710 Giuseppe Guarneri filius Andreae violin kindly loaned to him by five Winterthur families and the Rychenberg Foundation.