Isabel Gabbe

Univ.-Prof. for Piano & Piano Didactics⋅Department Music Education Innsbruck⋅School of Music & Arts Education (SOMA)

"Communicating with music means communicating across all language barriers!" says Isabel Gabbe, so it is not surprising that the pianist and music educator of German-French origin appears as a chamber musician and song accompanist as well as a soloist. In 2016, she received the call as professor for piano and piano didactics at the Mozarteum University, whose department in Innsbruck she has headed since 2019.

In the past she has been able to gain many years of experience as a piano teacher and music teacher in the areas of music colleges, music schools, general education schools and day care centers. From 2009 to 2014 she was coordinator and member of the educational management for the education program of the Stiftung Klavier-Festival Ruhr. In numerous workshops in North Rhine-Westphalia, she trains educators and primary school teachers in creative music-making with groups of children. The regular cooperation with the "Klavier-Festival Ruhr" is very important to her in order to establish music as a natural part of children's education. She enabled encounters between well-known and established musicians with young, up-and-coming talents and designed concert programs with worthwhile, unknown works.
Isabel Gabbe gives concerts and gives master classes and training courses throughout Europe, Brazil and the USA. She inspires her audience in large halls such as the Philharmonie Berlin, the Konzerthaus Berlin, the Glocke Bremen, the Teatro Guaira (largest concert hall in South America) and the Cologne Philharmonic.

As a soloist and chamber musician, she has won prizes at numerous national and international competitions, including the Bremen Piano Competition, the duo competitions in Barcelona (Spain) and Caltanissetta (Italy) and the competition of the German Music Council.

She has made numerous radio and television recordings for Deutschland Radio Berlin, Sender Freies Berlin, WDR, France 2 and Radio Bremen. Her debut CD was released in 2006 with suites by Debussy, Ravel, Bach and Albéniz. In 2013 a CD with songs by the contemporary composer John Patrick Thomas was released together with the soprano Julia Henning. In 2014 she produced a CD with the Kettwiger Bach Ensemble with Rossini's Petite Messe Solennelle on a historic Robert Schumann Klems grand piano. In 2015 the CD "Santa Claus, do that!" at the label Kaleidos Music Editions. Publications on piano didactics can be found at Practicing & Making Music (Schott-Verlag) and Innsbruck Perspectives on Music Education (Waxman-Verlag).

Isabel Gabbe received her training from Prof. Hans Leygraf in Salzburg and Berlin. She received artistic inspiration from John Perry, Georgy Sebok, Klaus Schilde, Peter Frankle, Karl-Heinz Kämmerling, Paul Badura-Skoda and Rainer Becker. In chamber music courses she worked with Gerhard Schulz (Alban Berg Quartet), David Finckel (Emerson String Quartet), Zara Nelsova (NY), Eberhardt Feltz, Wolfram Rieger and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.