Franco-Swiss musician, Miguel da Silva was born in Reims in 1961. He started studying at the Conservatoire of his native city, before moving to Paris where he was a student at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique with Serge Collot. He was awarded first prize in chamber music and also for viola, unanimously with special vote by the jury. In 1985 he won the first Prize of the International chamber music competition in Paris.
His passion for string quartet led him to found the Ysaÿe Quartet with 3 of his friends. The Ysaÿe Quartet has then studied with the Amadeus String Quartet. After winning the first prizes in Evian, the members of the Ysaÿe Quartet soon started an international career. This brilliant 30 year journey was brought to an end in January 2014, after a major series of concerts, with a special emphasis on the music of Beethoven.
In the past few years, engagements either as a solo player or with his quartet have led him to the Wigmore Hall in London and most of the greatest concert halls in Europe (Munich/Herkulesaal, Venice/Teatro della Fenice, Copenhagen Helsinki, Amsterdam/Concertgebouw, Hannover, Basel, Baden-Baden, Salzburg/Festspielhaus, Leipzig) and he has toured in Belgium, USA, Japan and Italy. As a very sought for chamber music player, his partners are Michel Portal, Jean-Claude Pennetier, Paul Meyer, Leonidas Kavakos, Pierre Amoyal, Augustin Dumay, Nikita BorisoGlebksy, Antonio Meneses, Jean François Heisser, Truls Mork, Henri Demarquette, Gary Hoffmann, Emmanuel Pahud, Christophe Coin.
In 1994, he started a class of string quartets (premiere in France!) and has since then been teaching a whole new generation of French and European quartets and chamber music groups at the Conservatoire National de Région in Paris. In 2008, he was appointed as a professor in Luebeck’s Musikhoch schule (Germany) where he took over Walter Levine’s position, as a tutor at the European Chamber Music Academy (ECMA) and for Vienna Music University’s Summer Academy (ISA). In 2009, he joined Geneva’s Haute Ecole de Musique (Switzerland) as a viola and chamber music teacher, and became the artistic director of Villecroze’ Académie musicale (France). Since 2014, he is Master in Residence at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel in Belgium.
