Melissa Jacobson-Velandia
Melissa was born in the city of Nacka in December 1990 to a Swedish father and Colombian mother. She was a student of the class of professor Staffan Scheja at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm from 2008 to 2010. Since the fall of 2010 she lives in Düsseldorf in Germany, where she completed her master studies in 2014 under Professor Paolo Giacometti and her Konzertexamen in January 2017, under the professorship of Georg Friedrich Schenck. She performed Rachmaninov’s 3rd piano concerto with the Neue Philharmonie Westfalen and a solo recital of 90 minutes, receiving the highest mark for both her exams.
Melissa has participated in various master classes with renowned pianists, including Yonty Solomon, Paolo Giacometti, Jan Wijn, Francesco Possenti, Hans Leygraf, Hans Pålsson, Kevin Kenner, Håvard Gimse, and Per Tengstrand. She has also taken private lessons from the Swedish pianist Roland Pöntinen.
In 2011 Melissa was awarded the 1st prize at the Steinway Piano Competition in Düsseldorf at the Robert Schumann Hochschule. In 2014 she won the 3rd prize at the Schmolz und Bickenback music competition in Düsseldorf and was awarded 1st prize in the same competition the year after.
Melissa has performed as a soloist and chamber musician in the UK, Sweden, Denmark, Colombia, Holland, Switzerland, Italy and Germany. In August of 2010 she participated in “the Chopin Marathon Concert” in Stockholm alongside, among others, Roland Pöntinen and Staffan Scheja. Other noteworthy performances include: solo recitals in Bogota under the auspices of the Swedish Embassy; participation in a concert series at the Church of St Lawrence’s Jewry in London, solo-performances in the Tonhalle Düsseldorf and in the Jahrhunderthalle Bochum during the renowned Rhein-Ruhr Festival, perfomances during the Mondomusica Festival in Cremona, Italy.
In 2016 she was chosen to take part in the International Music Festival in Cartagena, Colombia, as a soloist and young talent. The same year in the summer she performed “The Seasons” by John Cage under Michael Tilson Thomas during the Verbier Festival with the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra. She was reinvited for the summer of 2017, where she performed in several concerts, among others with Joshua Weilerstein and Michèle Larivière. She has performed Gershwin´s Rhapsody in Blue with different orchestras and Rachmaninov´s 3rd piano concerto for her graduation concert in Düsseldorf.
Melissa has been awarded a number of scholarships, such as Alice Babs’ scholarship for Young Talented Musicians 2004, Gottfried Boon’s scholarship 2005, Mai von Rosen’s scholarship 2006, scholarship for young people of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music 2007, Alice Babs’ Music Scholarship 2008, the Swedish Masonic Order’s scholarship 2009, Sigrid Paskell’s Scholarship for the Performing Arts 2011, the german “E.ON- DAAD” scholarship in 2013 and 2015.
