Lars Wouters van den Oudenweijer

Dutch clarinetist Lars Wouters van den Oudenweijer (1977) studied at the Juilliard School for Music in New York with clarinetist Charles Neidich on a sponsorship by the Fulbright International Scholarship Program. Lars has won several first prizes at international competitions such as the "International Competition for Youth" (Lisbon 1994) and the “RTBF Jeunes Solistes” (Brussels 1993). In 1999 he made his début in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and performed very successfully as a Rising Star in the so named concert series in 2001-2002. Since then, Lars has played in major venues such as Carnegie Hall New York, Wigmore Hall London, Musik Verein Vienna, Cité de la Musique Paris and Philharmonie Berlin. He has appeared as a soloist with orchestras such as the Rotterdam Philharmonic, Chamber Orchestra of the Netherlands, New Ensemble Amsterdam and Amsterdam Sinfonietta. He performed the world premiere of the Clarinet Concerto "Yellow Darkness", written for him by Willem Jeths, in 2005 and the piece "Euro" by Theo Abazis at Carnegie Hall in 2001.
Lars has been a member of Spectrum Concerts Berlin since 2000. He has performed with string quartets and ensembles such as Skampa Quartet, Quatuor Danel, Quatuor Ebène, and Altenberg Trio Wien. Lars performs frequently in the major international festivals with colleagues like Janine Jansen, Inon Barnatan, Amihai Grosz etc. He is also a guest-player with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields in the UK. In 2003, Lars was awarded an "Edison" for his début CD. Other CD’s followed, with music by Dohnányi, Harbison and Hindemith. In 2009, Challenge Records released his CD with Reger sonatas, which received outstanding reviews by the international music press. Lars founded and is artistic director of the "Dutch Tone Festival" in ‘s-Hertogenbosch. He teaches at the Fontys Music Academy Tilburg.