ORBIT

The bass-baritone Robert Koller, born in Basel, has performed extensive solo repertoire under conductors of widely differing artistic backgrounds, including Andrea Marcon, Heinz Holliger, Jordi Savall, Emilio Pomárico, Roland Böer, and Christian Schumann.

In 2016, he appeared as soloist in Kaija Saariaho’s Sombre at the Schwetzingen SWR Festival. He sang the bass role in Handel’s Siroe, Re di Persia at the Laeiszhalle Hamburg, in San Francisco, and at the Styriarte Festival in Graz.

Further engagements have included leading roles and orchestral recitals at the Cervantino Festival in Mexico, the Gaida Festival in Vilnius, the Davos Festival, the Società del Quartetto Milano, the Cantiere Internazionale d’Arte in Montepulciano, the Acht Brücken Festival in Cologne, Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, and the Kyiv Philharmonic.

In 2012, the Semperoper Dresden engaged him for the title role in Hans Werner Henze’s El Cimarrón, which he also performed in Bremen in 2020. Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 has taken him to the Berlin Philharmonie, the Aichi Arts Center in Japan, the Kulturcasino Bern, and Toyota.

He performed Heinz Holliger’s Dunkle Spiegel at the Goldberg Variations Festival at the Alte Oper Frankfurt and appeared in operas by Michael Roth and Georg Friedrich Haas at the Lucerne Festival.

He has collaborated with ensembles including the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, the Basel Symphony Orchestra, the Brandenburg State Orchestra, the Basel Chamber Orchestra, and the Jena Philharmonic.

Recent engagements have taken him to the Vienna Musikverein, the Arnold Schönberg Center in Vienna, and, under the direction of Heinz Holliger, to the Collegium Novum Zürich.

In 2026, he will appear as a soloist at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich, perform Donizetti’s Requiem with the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, and sing works by Henze at the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma.