Franceso Sica, Violin

was born in Sicily into a musical family. At the age of seven, he began violin lessons at the Catania Conservatory and graduated with honours. After postgraduate studies with Felice Cusano at the Academy in Fiesole, he studied at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Frankfurt am Main, where he received his diploma in the class of Priya Mitchell followed by Konzertexamen in the class of Sophia Jaffé. At the same time he studied chamber music at the Escuela de Musica Reina Sofia in Madrid with Ralf Gothoni and in Essen with Dirk Mommertz. Francesco plays regularly as a chamber musician and is a member of the Gémeaux Quartet and the Monte Piano Trio. Together with his colleagues he has performed in concert halls such as London's Wigmore Hall, Kings Place, Conway Hall, Tonhalle Zurich and Laeiszhalle Hamburg and has been broadcast on WDR, SWR, HR, BR and Deutschlandfunk. Francesco has performed at several major festivals including the Enescu Festival, Schleswig- Holstein, Osnabrück Chamber Music Festival, Mozartfest, Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommen, Heidelberger Frühling and Constella Festival in the USA. He has recorded two trio CDs, released on the GENUIN label, which have received five-star reviews from the Sunday Times Magazine and Fonoforum.

As an orchestral musician, Francesco worked as deputy concertmaster at the Staatstheater Darmstadt. He has also played with the Frankfurt Museum Orchestra and the Hessischer Rundfunk Symphony Orchestra, among others. Francesco is artistic director of the chamber music festival "MusiKulinarium" at Lake Constance, in Germany. As a soloist, he has won several national and international competitions, including "Città di Vittorio Veneto". He was inspired by master classes with artists such as Ivry Gitlis, Günter Pichler, Menahem Pressler, Shmuel Ashkenasi, Eberald Feltz, Enrico Dindo, Sergey Girshenko and Valentin Erben. Since 2023 he is the second violin leader of the Musikkollegium Winterthur and a member of the Winterthur String Quartet.