Andrej van Brakel (b. 2005) has performed at numerous international festivals and prestigious venues, including the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Muziekgebouw Eindhoven, De Doelen Rotterdam, and Theater aan ’t Vrijthof, among others.

A laureate of the Vladimir Spivakov Foundation, he performed the festival’s closing concert with orchestra and appeared at the Moscow State Philharmonic Society, the International Performing Arts Centre, and the Tchaikovsky State Conservatory. In 2021, he appeared as a soloist with orchestra before 6,000 attendees at Boris Berezovsky’s festival in Elabuga. He has also performed multiple times at the ‘Les Pianos Folies’ festival.

Andrej has made several television appearances, including a recent solo performance on the national show Podium Klassiek, where he was featured as a ‘Young Hero’.

He began his musical journey at the age of four and studied in the Young Talent Class at the Conservatory of Maastricht with Prof. Gabriel Schwabe, and privately with Prof. Godfried Hoogeveen, both of whom have been central to his development as a cellist. He continued his studies at the Lübeck Conservatory with Prof. Troels Svane, and has participated in masterclasses with Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt, Jens-Peter Maintz, Gary Hoffman, Tanja Tetzlaff, Jakob Koranyi, Wen-Sinn Yang, and Gabriel Schwabe.

Andrej is a laureate of the Royal Concertgebouw Competition (2019), Classic Young Masters (CYM, 2021), and the International Vienna Music Competition (2020) in the category Strings up to 19 years. He is also included in the Dutch Talents Foundation and Foundation Talent Empowerment, which support his development through masterclasses and other projects, as well as the Dutch National Music Instrument Foundation.

He currently plays a Franz Johann Glass cello (1898), generously on loan from the Sinfonima Stiftung.