Born in South Africa in 1982, Anne-Monika von Twardowski received her first piano lessons in Germany at the age of six. After graduating from high school, she studied at the Lübeck University of Music and, as part of the Erasmus exchange program, at the Escola Superior de Música Catalunya in Barcelona. In addition to completing a diploma in instrumental pedagogy and art, she also completed a master’s degree in pianism at the Lübeck University of Music.
From 2008 to 2018 she was the pianist in the Salut Salon quartet, with whom she played over 900 concerts worldwide. In 2016 she and Salut Salon received an ECHO Klassik for the album “Carnival Fantasy”. She has performed as a guest soloist with Ute Lemper and the Philharmonic State Orchestra under Kent Nagano in the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg. Her great passion is chamber music. One focus of her work is to fill chamber music events with innovative ideas, create new connections and bring musicians from different cultures and genres together. Together with cellist Sonja Lena Schmid, she is the initiator and artistic director of “Rauschen – Chamber Music & Electronics”, which combines classical chamber music with live electronics in a new club format. Since June 2024, she has been the artistic director of the annual Rellingen May Festival, where musicians from different parts of the world come together over three days to play chamber music, organize musical readings and concerts for children. Due to the exit restrictions during the Corona pandemic, in March 2020 she founded the interactive musical online project “Hallo Kinder!” together with singer Wiebke Wilhelmine Kruse, in which they taught children new songs with matching movements every week. Anne-Monika von Twardowski is also dedicated to writing arrangements. For example, she adapted Modest Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” into a version for piano quintet, which premiered in February 2021 at the Elbphilharmonie. Since 2024 she has been playing as a pianist and singer in the duo Klavieriki alongside pianist Olga Shkrygunova. Here, both musicians combine clowning with music, lightness and humor for young and old.
In 2015, Anne-Monika von Twardowski was named Honorary Alster Lock Keeper – an award for Hamburg residents who have made a name for themselves as ambassadors for Hamburg in the world. She is a volunteer patron of the federal initiative “School with Courage – School without Racism” at the Theodor Heuss School in Pinneberg. Anne-Monika von Twardowski lives and works in Hamburg.