Charming, graceful and stylish from top to toe, this violin goddess from Riga, Latvia, stunned ASB members from all over the world with her scintillating Tchaikovsky performance at the Queen Elizabeth competition last year.

Baiba Skride, First Prizewinner of the Queen Elisabeth Competition of Belgium in Brussels 2001, was born in Riga in 1981 as the daughter of noted Latvian musicians. She started studying the violin at the age of four in Riga and went on with her studies from 1995 at the Hochschule fur Musik und Theater Rostock with Prof. Petru Munteanu. She also attended master classes of Ruggiero Ricci and Lewis Kaplan.

Already before being awarded with the renowned prize of the competition in Brussels, Baiba Skride has received first prize at such competitions as the International Competition for Violin Kloster Schontal in 1995, the International Competition Jeunesse Musicales in Bukarest in 1997 and the International Lipizer Competition in Gorizia/ Italy in 2000.

Baiba Skride has performed with international renowned orchestras, including the Estonian National Orchestra Tallinn under Martin Haselbock, the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra under D. Milnes and M. Bergs, the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, the Philharmonic Orchestra Novosibirsk under W.Nelsson and M.Abramov and the Radio-Philharmonie Hannover under Eji Oue.
Recitals have taken her to Helsinki, Riga, Hamburg, Straßburg, Rostock, the festival of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and to Salzburg, where she performed within the ' Salzburger Schloßkonzerte '.

Highlights of the current season are her performance of the Prokofieff Violin Concerto No.1 with the Belgian National Orchestra under Lorin Maazel, a recital at the renowned Festival of Montpellier by Radio France and her performance of the Mozart Violin Concerto No.2 with the Parnu City Orchestra under Neeme Jarvi. Further upcoming invitations include a recital at the Societe Philharmonique Brussels in October 2001 and a recital at the Louvre/ Paris in 2002.
Orchestras as the Orchestre National de France, the Hessischer Rundfunk/ Frankfurt, the Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart, the Orquesta Sinfonica de Euskadi from Spain, the Nieuw Sinfonietta De Hague, the L'Orchestre Philharmonique de Liège and the Wurttembergisches Kammerorchester Heilbronn have invited her.
She also is invited to perform at the Festival de Lanaudiere and with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra in Canada.

Baiba Skride performs on the Stradivarius 1708 "Huggins" violin, kindly lent to her by the Nippon Music Foundation.

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