Christian Wernicke was born in 1976 and studied guitar with Alvaro Pierri and Roberto Aussel, and conducting with Reiner Schuhenn at the Cologne Musikhochschule. He also spent a year in Madrid on a European Union scholarship. While there, his activities included founding and leading the guitar orchestra at the Real Conservatorio Superior.As soloist, chamber musician and conductor, he appears regularly as a guest at international festivals and has participated in many TV, radio, and CD productions. With the support of the Goethe Institute and the German Foreign Office, he has undertaken tours in countries spread across all five continents: Cuba, Brazil, Chile, Peru, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Australia, Thailand, Laos, Singapore, Morocco, Spain, France, Italy, Russia, Lithuania, Denmark and the Czech Republic.He has performed with orchestras and as soloist in many venues, including the Berlin, Cologne and Munich Philharmonies, the Hamburg Musikhalle, at Munich’s Herkulessaal, and in the Konzerthaus am Gendarmenmarkt in Berlin. Christian Wernicke has enjoyed the support of various important scholarships and has been a prize winner at numerous national and international competitions. In 2003, he won the most important competition for young musicians in Germany, the Deutsche Musikwettbewerb. A year later, in 2004, he captured first prize at the international Open Strings Competition and was the recipient of scholarships from the Deutsche Musikrat and the Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg.Since 2007, Christian Wernicke has been an instructor of guitar at the Fachhochschule (University of Applied Sciences) in Heidelberg and in Goethe Institute programmes abroad. In 2010, he received a grant from the Villa Musica and participated in the Mahler Chamber Orchestra’s European tour, playing at the Festspielhaus in Baden-Baden and the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées.
