Berit Cardas

About Berit Cardas

Berit Cardas started playing the violin at the age of 8. She studied at the music conservatoire in Oslo, at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hanover, Germany, and at the University of Minnesota, USA. She plays both the violin and the viola and appears regularly as a soloist on both instruments. In her quartet, the Vertavo String Quartet, she has played both 1st and  2nd violin and the viola. Founded in 1984, the ensemble has won the Grieg Prize, the Nordic Chamber Music Competition and the 1st prize, the Audience Prize and the Radio listeners’ Prize at the 2nd Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition in 1995.

Berit Cardas is on the artistic committee of the Oslo Quartet Series and she runs twinned chamber music festivals in Norway. She is an active chamber music teacher and leads popular workshops combining her backgrounds in theater improvisation and chamber music.

Orchestral conducting is the latest addition to Cardas’ career. She has conducted the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, Bergen Philharmonic orchestra, Arctic Philharmonic and the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, Stavanger Symphony orchestra and The Royal Norwegian Navy Band. She is the chief conductor of the Norwegian Youth Symphony Orchestra.

Berit Cardas is grateful to be able play a Lorenzo Storioni violin (1770) lent to her by the Norwegian Dextra Musica foundation.