Virginie Raemy was born in Geneva in 1988 into a family of music lovers. She took a violin in her hands for the first time at the age of five and hasn't let it go since. Her very first teacher is called Dominique Fivaz and motivates her with a system of points and small gifts. Virginie immediately loves violin lessons!

More seriously, she has always loved reading and devouring new pieces, discovering new musical horizons and being moved by music. It is also at this time that she begins chamber music, at the respectable age of five and a half.

She then studies at the Geneva Conservatory of Music in the class of Nicolas Jéquier and follows the quartet classes of Édouard Liechti. She participates assiduously in the Orchestre du Collège de Genève, an experience that is to be decisive in her career choice! She then performs her first opera - Isabelle Aboulker's Les Enfants du Levant - with the participation of musicians from the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande.

Her love of orchestral playing has never wavered; there is no greater musical exaltation than sharing emotions within a violin section or a chamber music ensemble.

Her professional studies begin at the age of sixteen with Margarita Piguet-Karafilova at the Haute École de Musique de Lausanne. She graduates four years later with a diploma in violin teaching. She is now a teacher in her turn, with the feeling that there is so much to learn!

At that time she discovers master classes, such as the Summer Academy in Sion where she studies with Gyulla Stuller.

She then decides to go and study in Germany, the cradle of music. Her meeting with Prof. Albrecht Winter at the Musikhochschule of Cologne / Wuppertal transforms her violin technique.

Thanks to his advice - and a lot of hard work - she wins her first two-year internship at the Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra. There she discovers the world of opera and falls irrevocably in love with Tosca, Isolde, Parsifal and Salome.

At the same time she becomes a member of the German Youth Philharmonic (Junge Deutsche Philharmonie). There she is several times head of the second violin section and plays numerous pieces from the great symphonic repertoire. She discovers the greatest German concert halls, such as the Berliner Philharmonie and the Konzerthaus Berlin, the Alte Oper Frankfurt, the Laeiszhalle in Hamburg, with conductors Kristjan Jäärvi, Lothar Zagroszek, Jonathan Stockhammer and Christophe Rousset.

It's a very intense period!

She is also interested in baroque music and takes viola da gamba lessons for three years with Gudrun Fuss, which is an ideal complement to the violin. What a pleasure to produce low sounds and to understand harmony by its basis!

It is a revelation when she discovers the Alexander Technique during a tour. She now integrates many of its principles into her pedagogical vision as well as into her personal playing.

After graduating as a violinist, she moves to Basel to study with Raphaël Oleg. She then founds her own violin class and obtained her Master of Performance in 2015. She also takes private lessons with Amandine Beyer and even plays half of her Master's program on the baroque violin.

She then obtains a one-year internship at the Basel Symphony Orchestra and continues her training with teachers such as Sebastian Hammann, Klaïdi Sahatci and Frédéric Anglereaux.

She currently works as a freelance musician based in Basel, where she teaches. She regularly collaborates with the Basel Symphony Orchestra, the Basel Sinfonietta, the Zurich Sinfonietta, the Swiss Orchestra and the 21st Century Orchestra. She is also a substitute teacher at the Basel and Riehen Musik-Akademie and at the Geneva Conservatory. She is also concertmaster of the Titus-Orchester in Bruderholz.

Virginie Raemy graduated from the University of Basel in February 2020 with a Bachelor of Laws degree.