Bassoon
Martha Benkendorf is a bassoonist and contrabassoonist living in Leipzig. She studied Orchestral Music at the music conservatories in Dresden and Rostock. She has given solo concerts with the Staatskapelle Halle and the Latina August Herrmann Francke Alumni Orchestra, among others. Concert tours have taken her to Austria, England, Switzerland, the Netherlands, France and China.
Martha Benkendorf (*30 March 1987) is a Leipzig-based bassoonist, music teacher and expert in educational music outreach.
She grew up in a musical family in Halle (Saale) completing her secondary schooling at the Latina "August Herrmann Francke" and graduating from the specialized music track.
Already while at secondary school, concert tours began to take her to Paris, Utrecht and St. Petersburg, among other cities. As a member of the bassoon quartet "The Fagöttinen," she won the Youth Culture Award (Jugendkulturpreis) for Saxony-Anhalt and a First Place at the national level in the highly regarded music competition "Jugend Musiziert," as well as many other awards and recognitions.
In 2006 she first went to Dresden and then later to Rostock to study Orchestral Bassoon, Music Education and Eurhythmics. During her university studies she began teaching and served as a temporary orchestra member, including on concert tours to Zurich, England and China.
Since 2016 she has worked as a freelance orchestra musician and as a music teacher for bassoon, piano, early childhood music, and instrumental ensembles at Leipzig's two main music schools, NeueMusik Leipzig and Musikschule J. S. Bach.
Alongside her professional work, she studied Educational Music Theater Outreach at the Mozarteum University Salzburg and attended many post-graduate courses in Music Education.
She has worked in educational community outreach at the Leipzig Opera and other institutions. Music outreach programs at elementary and secondary schools and social organizations focus mainly on current topics in music pedagogy, such as music and the digital world, intercultural music education, etc.
In October 2020 she was appointed to a lectureship in Educational Music Outreach at the Dresden College of Music.