Jörg Widmann is highly regarded worldwide as a composer, conductor and clarinettist. He studied clarinet with Gerd Starke in his native Munich and with Charles Neidich at the Juilliard School in New York.
He began taking composition lessons at the age of eleven; his composition teachers included Hans Werner Henze, Wolfgang Rihm and Heiner Goebbels.
His list of works includes dozens of orchestral compositions and solo concertos, ten string quartets and music theatre works such as Das Gesicht im Spiegel, Am Anfang, Babylon and the oratorio ARCHE. His concert overture Con brio has now been performed by more than sixty conductors, including Daniel Harding, who performed the work with Concertgebouw Orchestra Young in 2021.
As a clarinettist, Widmann is equally at home with Mozart and Brahms as he is with contemporary music. He has premiered works by Wolfgang Rihm and Heinz Holliger. His chamber music partners include Daniel Barenboim, Tabea Zimmermann, András Schiff and Hélène Grimaud.
Jörg Widmann is principal guest conductor of the Munich Chamber Orchestra, principal guest conductor of the NDR Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and (since January 2026) artistic director of the Lucerne Festival Academy. In addition, he teaches composition at the Barenboim-Said Academy in Berlin.
Jörg Widmann will make his conducting debut with the Concertgebouw Orchestra in the 2026-27 season. The orchestra has previously performed his Teufel Amor, Babylon Suite, Das heiße Herz and, in December 2025, Towards Paradise (Labyrinth VI) with conductor Jukka-Pekka Saraste and trumpeter Håkan Hardenberger.