Professor of cello and music history at Sao Paulo State University in Campinas, Brazil, Lars Hoefs performs and teaches in South America, the United States, and Europe. 2018 included concerts in Chile, France, Germany, Ireland, Spain, and Alaska, as well as solo appearances with Brazilian orchestras.
Lars has established himself as a leading expert on the cello repertoire of Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos and was the first cellist to perform together in one program the complete works for cello and orchestra by Villa-Lobos. Lars is artistic director of the annual Villa-Lobos International Chamber Music Festival in Southern California, the only festival dedicated to Latin American chamber music in the United States. Lars also actively promotes contemporary Brazilian music, premiering and recording works by composers Liduino Pitombeira, Joao Guilherme Ripper, Paulo Costa Lima, and Paulo C. Chagas among others.
As soloist in Brazil, in recent years Lars has performed concerti by Haydn, Schumann, Saint-Saens, Lalo, Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, Elgar, and Villa-Lobos with orchestras throughout the country. Notably Lars gave the South American premiere of Korngold’s Cello Concerto as well as performing the title role in Richard Strauss’ Don Quixote with the Orquestra Sinfonica Municipal of Campinas. Lars is a frequent guest at the Rio International Cello Encounters and the Festival Virtuosi in Recife, and in 2009, Lars spent the year as co-principal cellist of the Orquestra Sinfonica Brasileira in Rio de Janeiro under conductor Roberto Minczuk.
Originally from Appleton, Wisconsin, Lars earned his high school diploma at the North Carolina School of the Arts, a Bachelors from Northwestern University studying with esteemed pedagogue Hans Jorgen Jensen, and both Masters and Doctorate degrees from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles where he studied with former Los Angeles Philharmonic principal cellist Ronald Leonard. At Sao Paulo State University in Campinas, Lars founded and leads the Unicamp Cello Ensemble, a conductorless cello orchestra consisting of his current and former cello students. The Unicamp Cello Ensemble has performed at Brazil’s most prestigious festivals and concert halls including the Campos do Jordao Winter Music Festival, the Rio International Cello Encounters, and the Sao Paulo Cultural Center to name a few. In 2016 they recorded a CD of world premiere recordings, featuring Lalo Schifrin’s Divertimento, and toured throughout the state of Sao Paulo, and in 2018 they performed in Southern California, collaborating with cellists from Hollywood cinema orchestras and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
