MATTHIAS MATZKE
Matthias was born on January 28th, 1993 and lives in Gingen an der Fils, Germany.

After two years of basic musical education he began to play the accordion at the age of six and a half years at the municipal music school of Süßen and his teacher was Mr. Anatoli Lick who taught him until September 2009. Since 2006 he is a student of Hans-Günther Kölz at the Hohner Conservatory Trossingen.

Since he was nine, Matthias has also taken piano lessons. His recent piano and jazz piano teacher is Martin Rosengarten.

Matthias’s musical education also comprises master classes with Frédéric Deschamps in France.

2006 Matthias won the national final of the prestigious German competition “Deutscher Akkordeon Musikpreis” (German Accordion Music Prize) in the virtuoso entertainment music category and 2009 he won the first prize in the virtuoso entertainment music category of this competition as well as the first prize in the classical music category and therefore was awarded the prize by the Prime Minister of his state Baden-Württemberg.

2007 and 2010 Matthias received the first prize in the national competition for classical music “Jugend musiziert” (Youths play music).
A great experience was an invitation of the German Music Council and the Goethe-Institute to play four concerts in Ankara in 2008.

2008 Matthias won the second “Premio” during the 33rd international accordion festival “Città di Castelfidardo” in the junior competition for classical music.

2011 he won the third place of the famous competition for virtuoso entertainment music “Primus Ikaalinen” which was televised by Finnish Television.
Also in this year he won the “Coupe Mondiale” world championship in the category “junior virtuoso entertainment” and got the 8th place in the category for classical music of the same competition.

Electronic music also fascinates Matthias. 2009 he received the first prize of the ROLAND V-Accordion Festival in the junior category and 2011 he won the national final of this competition in the adult category and received the second prize of the international competition in Rome. Matthias was awarded with the title “Kid of the Year 2009” as overall winner of the “Kids2Keys” contest which is a competition for creativity and electronic instruments organized by the IFET association.
Since then he has played concerts for ROLAND, for example during the “Night of Keys” on the Musikmesse Frankfurt.

What Matthias likes about the accordion is the sometimes underestimated variety of this instrument and the possibility to use it for every possible style of music which often results in surprises.