Önder Baloglu is a musician who understands boundaries as invitations. The Turkish-German violinist moves with ease between solo performance, chamber music, orchestral leadership, festival curation, and teaching—always guided by what holds music together at its core: its language, its energy, and its power to connect people, or to concertare—to generate ideas and dialogue through collaboration.
As a soloist and musical director, Baloglu has performed in most European countries and in Turkey, appearing with the Duisburg, Bochum, Dortmund, Aachen, and Koblenz Philharmonic Orchestras, the Württemberg Chamber Orchestra Heilbronn, KlangVerwaltung Munich, the Gedik Philharmonic Orchestra, all state orchestras of Turkey, the Bilkent and Yaşar Symphony Orchestras, as well as the Western Balkans Youth Orchestra.
With his ensemble Les essences, supported since 2021 by the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, Baloglu develops distinctive program concepts that move between tradition and the present. The ensemble’s repertoire spans Baroque and Classical masterpieces as well as contemporary constellations—from Bach’s Christmas Oratorio with Chorwerk Ruhr to the sound worlds of the Second Viennese School and Jewish music from the Romantic era to modernity. In 2025, Les essences received the Music Promotion Award of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, in addition to a Grand Prize and a Third Prize at the Petricor Records International Competition in New York.
Baloglu’s artistic signature is especially evident where contexts begin to dissolve. With the program “Alla Turca,” he devised an ironic and musical exploration between Vienna and Istanbul, making audible the cultural reflections of the 18th-century “Turkish fashion.” In 2025, as Composer in Residence of the Kunststiftung NRW in Istanbul, he will develop a new work for chamber orchestra—seen through the perspective of a stray cat.
As a chamber musician, Baloglu has collaborated with artists such as Anja Lechner, Rebekka Hartmann, Boris Bloch, Vladimir Mendelssohn, Nino Gvetadze, Anastasia Kobekina, Klaus Mäkelä, Alissa Margulis, Marc Bouchkov, and Fazıl Say. He has appeared at renowned festivals and venues including the Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival in Finland, the Istanbul, Adana, and Durrës Chamber Music Festivals, the U. Hajibeyov Festival in Baku, Festival BUNT in Belgrade, as well as the Philharmonie Essen, Tonhalle Düsseldorf, Konzerthaus Berlin, and the Vienna Musikverein.
From 2013 to 2022, Baloglu served as concertmaster of the Duisburg Philharmonic Orchestra and the Deutsche Oper am Rhein Düsseldorf–Duisburg. Guest engagements have taken him to leading orchestras throughout Germany, his home country Turkey, and beyond.
Alongside his concert activities, Baloglu continually creates new spaces for music. He founded the festival “Klassisch.Unterirdisch” at the Katakomben Theatre in Essen, offering a platform for classical music beyond established concert halls; initiated the concert series “Musik am Marientor” in Duisburg and “LES ESSENCES,” first in Essen and later throughout the Ruhr region; and served as artistic director of the Klasik Keyifler Festival in Cappadocia. With the project “Unvoiced Diaries,” created during the 2020 pandemic, he commissioned 24 Turkish composers from around the world to write miniatures for solo violin—a quiet, globally connected reflection on isolation and proximity, conceived for performances on social media.
Önder Baloglu has been teaching for over ten years at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen and from 2020 to 2024 at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague. He studied with Nana Jashvili, Pieter Daniel, and Andreas Reiner, and has worked with artists such as Reinhard Goebel, Vadim Gluzman, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Ivry Gitlis, Gordan Nikolić, and Enoch zu Guttenberg.
He performs on a violin by Antonio Gragnani (Livorno, 1779), a Baroque violin from the Thier workshop (Vienna, ca. 1760), and a viola by Paolo Castello (Genoa, ca. 1770).
Violinist Önder Baloglu is a promising talent, his clear Glissandi, the accurateness of his higher notes are moving. If there was the term ‘belcanto’ for the violin, Baloglu had earn it… (Augsburger Allgemeine)
