Katarina Schmidt was born in Munich in 1993, and has been playing violoncello since the age of three. Since 2008 she has been studying under Professor Wen-Sinn Yang at the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich – first as a junior student, and currently as an undergraduate student. Since 2015 she has also been studying Baroque cello with Professor Kristin von der Goltz, and has undertaken an Erasmus year at the private Music and Arts University of the City of Vienna, where she studied with Professor Natalia Gutman. She has been receiving additional lessons in conducting from Folko Jungnitsch, and gives guest performances with the Pullach chamber orchestra.

She has rounded off her musical education by regularly attending masterclasses given by accomplished soloists such as Heinrich Schiff, Frans Helmerson, David Geringas, Jens Peter Maintz and Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt. Additionally, she receives a scholarship from the International Music Academy in the Principality of Liechtenstein, and attends the intensive music weeks and other activities on offer there.

Numerous 1st prizes at the “Jugend musiziert” competition for young musicians, both in the solo and duet categories, have accompanied her artistic career. In 2010 she was awarded the “Klassikpreis der Stadt Münster” and a special prize from the “Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben” foundation. In 2013 she won the special prize for the best interpretation of the commissioned piece by Manfred Trojahn at the “Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Hochschulwettbewerb” competition. In 2014 she was awarded the “Leonhard und Ida Wolf-Gedächtnispreis” by the city of Munich.

Katarina Schmidt made her debut as a soloist with orchestral accompaniment at the tender age of ten, and since then has successfully given many public performances, for example in the Hercules Hall, Munich, with the “Südwestdeutsches Kammerorchester Pforzheim” and with the “Bad Reichenhaller Philharmonie”. As a committed chamber musician she has performed in several Bayerische Rundfunk recordings.

March 2016