Biography
Kryštof Kohout was born in 2000 in Pilsen, Czech Republic and started playing the violin at the age of five. He has won numerous prizes in international competitions both in the Czech Republic and abroad, such as the Kocian Violin Competition where he was also awarded the prize for the best Czech participant, the Art-Duo International Music Festival in Vienna and the Muse International Music Competition (Greece) among others. In 2017 Kryštof won the Whitgift International Music Competition, receiving the coveted Headmaster’s Scholarship to study at the Whitgift School and a scholarship to Junior Guildhall – the young talent division of the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. In 2019, Kryštof was accepted directly into the second year of undergraduate course at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama where he now studies as a full scholarship student with professor David Takeno (Eugène Ysaÿe International Chair of Violin).
Kryštof has benefitted from masterclasses with many distinguished violinists such as Anne-Sophie Mutter, Pierre Amoyal, Simon James, Gyorgy Pauk, Earl Carlyss, Adrian Brendel and Josef Špaček and took part in international courses including the London Master Classes, Liberec International Violin Academy and the Franco-Czech Academy of Music in Telč. In 2017, Kryštof was awarded a scholarship to attend the Meadowmount School of Music in New York where he was a student of Ivan Ženatý and Kevork Mardirossian.
Kryštof has performed numerous times as a soloist with the Pilsen Philharmonic Orchestra under conductors Ondrej Kukal, Koji Kawamoto and Tomas Brauner and has performed as a soloist and chamber musician in the Czech Republic, Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, Poland, the USA and the United Kingdom. He has also taken part in side-by-side orchestral projects with members of the London Symphony Orchestra and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra resulting in performances at Cadogan Hall and Barbican Hall with conductors such as Michael Tilson Thomas, Joshua Weilerstein and Richard Farnes. He is grateful for support from the Huddersfield 1980 Scholarship Fund, Velehrad London and the Charity of Mary Barnes.
