Joe Rappaport, Violin

Joe Rappaport is a founder member of the COE, having been Principal Second Violin with the ECYO under Claudio Abbado. He started playing the violin aged seven and, from the age of ten, was a pupil in the Junior Department of the Royal College of Music. He studied violin and chamber music with Sidney Griller at the Royal Academy of Music, where he was Leader of RAM Symphony Orchestra in his final year. He then furthered his studies in Vienna at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst (Conservatoire) with Professor Michael Schnitzler. After pursuing his career in London, including work with the Philharmonia Orchestra, he moved back to Vienna, playing chamber music, the baroque violin, contemporary music and projects with jazz musicians (including the Vienna Art Orchestra). Joe is a qualified Feldenkrais Method practitioner and has worked with colleagues to develop a string-playing pedagogy based on the Method. Soon after moving to Munich, he founded the Band “Gefilte Fish” (an Ensemble that plays yiddish and Jewish songs and music), for which he also writes arrangements for voice, violin, guitar, accordion and bass.