Galya Bisengalieva

Galya was born into a musical family in 1986 and grew up in Almaty, Kazakhstan. She started the violin at the age of five at the Baiseitova Music School in Almaty, studying with Professors Nina Patrusheva and Alma Abbatova. At ten she made her first public appearance, performing the Bach Concerto in A minor with the Kazakh State Symphony Orchestra.

In 1999 Galya travelled to England to study for her A-levels at Denstone College. In 2002 she won a scholarship to the Junior Royal Academy of Music in London, studying with Nina Martin, winning in her first year the Violin Prize and the Dame Ruth Railton Chamber Music Prize. In June 2005 Galya performed the Ravel “Tzigane” with the Junior Academy Symphony Orchestra.

In 2004, Galya took the first prize in the 2004 Kenneth Page Foundation Competition. The following year she won the Kazakh Presidential Scholardship ‘Bolashak’ and the ‘Ethel Kennedy Jacobs’ Scholarship to continue her studies at the Senior Academy under Professor Gyorgy Pauk, with whom she also participated in the London Master Classes in July 2006.

Galya is a soloist well known to the Sheffield Chamber Orchestra. She performed with them the Bruch Violin Concerto in 2003, the Beethoven Violin Concerto in 2005 and the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto in May 2007.

Apart from her studies at the Royal Academy of Music Galya is also a passionate orchestral musician. She is a member of The West Kazakhstan Philharmonic Orchestra which was founded in Uralsk in 2003. They have toured successfully in Great Britain, India, Poland, Italy, Ireland, Ukraine and Russia; have signed recording contracts with EMI, Sony BMG, Quarts and Toccata Classics, recording more than ten disks in three years. Galya is also a member of the newly founded Symphony Orchestra of India, which enables her to travel to Mumbai for two seasons in September and February each year offering a series of concerts.