Belgian-American violinist, Maximilian Haft resides in Geneva, Switzerland and has lived on the European continent since 2009. A multifaceted musician performing a wide array of repertoire, Max specializes in contemporary solo, chamber, ensemble music and free improvisation. He has performed on major stages and intimate venues across Europe, North America, South America, and the Middle East in formal concert setting, theatrical contexts and spatial installations.

As a soloist, Max has performed and premiered contemporary violin concertos with the Northern Netherlands Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Contrechamps, the Geneva Chamber Orchestra (l’OCG), the UC Davis Symphony Orchestra, Collegium Novum Zurich, and the Kyiv Symphony Orchestra. He has recorded for Mode Records, Kairos, Klarthe, Wergo, Col Legno, Edition RZ, Fyo, Megadisc, Centaur, Neu Records, and Musique Suisse labels as a soloist, chamber or ensemble musician.

Max has held the position of 1st violin solo with Ensemble Contrechamps since 2015 and is a founding member of Ensemble Proton Bern, two new music institutions based in Switzerland. Max has also been a regular guest performer with Musik Fabrik, Asko-Schoenberg Ensemble, Ensemble Klang, E-Mex Ensemble, the Callithumpian Consort and was a former member of Ensemble Garage in Cologne. As an orchestral musician, Max has been a guest concertmaster with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and has worked with the Bern Camerata, the United Strings of Europe, the Metropole Orchestra, and was a former 1st violinist of the New Utrecht Philharmonie. He has premiered solo and chamber works by such composers as Samuel Andreyev, Michael Jarrell, Dominique Schafer, and has worked closely with Heinz Holliger, Oliver Knussen, Hans Zender, Beat Furrer, and Michael Gordon. He has appeared at such festivals as Donaueschingen, Eclat, Acht Brücken, Warsaw Autumn, Archipel, Pori Jazz, Orvieto Winter Jazz, Edinburgh World Festival, The Lucerne Festival, Re-musik, and the Festival for New American Music in Sacramento.

Beyond the classical and contemporary music world, Max has performed and collaborated with a diverse cast of jazz, electronic, pop, and folk musicians including Marc Ribot, Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Roscoe Mitchell, Eef van Breen, Matmos, Colin Self, Tesla, White Hinterland, Anais Mitchell and Sam Amidon. He was a founding member of the New York based band Cuddle Magic. In 2021, Max transcribed and premiered the first live performance of Tony Conrad’s 4 Violins. He continues to develop his own electro-acoustic compositions using collected field recordings and string drones.

Currently a doctoral candidate at University of Leiden’s artistic research program, Max’s research revolves around the organology of the Stroh violin. The subject of his PhD dissertation is entitled: The Strings of a Horn: demystifying the past and provoking the future of the Stroh Violin. He has taken part in performance residencies at Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, University of California, Davis, The University of Texas, Austin, and The Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, and has been a guest lecturer at La Manufacture in Lausanne, the Conservatory of Geneva (HEM) and the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. He is currently an invited professor for contemporary violin performance and chamber music at the Conservatory of Geneva.

Max studied at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music pre-college division with Zaven Melikian and Wei He. He has a Bachelor’s in Violin Performance from the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston where he studied with Masuko Ushioda†. He graduated with a Master’s degree cum laude from the Royal Conservatory of The Hague having studied with Vera Beths. During his Master’s studies, Max was a finalist in De Link Prijs (2011) and in the Storioni Chamber Music Competition, as well as a recipient of the HSP Huygens Scholarship (2010).

Max plays on a violin made by Andranik Gaybarian and a bow from Randy Steenburgen. He is a native of Sacramento California where he returns during the summer to teach chamber music to young aspiring musicians of his former youth symphony and as a performer with the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music Orchestra in Santa Cruz.

Ensembles

Ensemble Contrechamps

https://www.contrechamps.ch/biographie-haft

Ensemble Proton

https://ensembleproton.ch/en/artist/maximilian-haft