Irène Chatzisavas was born in Besançon to a French mother and a Cypriot father. She was awarded first prize, “excellence” level, at the Concours Léopold Bellan in Paris in 1998 and went on to study at the Royal Academy of Music in London under Erich Gruenberg. She continued her studies at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Frankfurt am Main and later at the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien in Hanover under Ulrich Edelmann and Ulf Schneider. In 2008, she won third prize at the German Lions Club’s national competition, along with a special prize from the publishers Bärenreiter for the interpretation of a contemporary work. Attracted to orchestras at a young age, she was a member of the European Union Youth Orchestra (EUYO) from 1999 to 2003, took part in the Pacific Music Festival (PMF) in Sapporo in 2004, and was a member of the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester in 2005 and 2006. She was an intern in the first violins of the Frankfurter Opern- und Museumsorchester at the Frankfurt am Main opera house from 2005 to 2006; later, she joined the Italian chamber orchestra Spira Mirabilis and played in the Orquestra de la Communitat Valenciana in Spain under Lorin Maazel, before joining the first violins of the Staatskapelle Berlin’s Akademie – with which she still performs regularly – in 2009. Since 2009 she has been a member of Daniel Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. She joined the Luxembourg Philharmonic in 2010.
©: Sebastien Grebille
