Cologne University of Music and Dance Names New Viola Faculty 

Violist Öykü Canpolat-Rast will join the school for its 2025 summer semester 

Germany’s Cologne University of Music and Dance has appointed the Turkish violist Öykü Canpolat-Rast as a viola professor for its summer semester this year. 

Canpolat-Rast has also been serving as a viola professor at the Stuttgart State University of Music and Performing Arts since 2023.

A graduate of the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler Berlin, where she studied with Pauline Sachse, Friedemann Weigle, and Tabea Zimmermann, Canpolat-Rast has received top prizes at competitions including first prize at the 2015 International Syzmon Goldberg Competition. 

In 2016, she won a deputy principal viola with the Deutsche Oper Berlin orchestra while still a student. A year after her graduation in 2019, she joined the Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne as principal violist. 

Since 2022, she has been a member of the Bayreuth Wagner Festival Orchestra, where she plays as principal and deputy principal viola.

Additionally, she has played principal viola with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Munich Philharmonic, WDR Symphony Orchestra, and MDR Symphony Orchestra, where she worked with renowned conductors

In chamber music, her collaborators have included Tabea Zimmermann, Jean-Guihen Queyras, Fazil Say, Vogler Quartet, Konstantin Heidrich, Boris Garlitsky, and more.

“I want to share with you the happiness of fulfilling a dream of mine,” Canpolat-Rast shared on Instagram. “I have started my duty as Violin Professor at Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Cologne from April … It is a great honor for me to teach at this university, where outstanding musicians have always worked and continue to work! I am particularly looking forward to working with young musicians, learning together, discovering, inspiring each other, and accompanying them on their artistic journey.”