Conductor
Prof. Dr. Stefan Willich
Stefan Willich is founder and music director of the World Doctors Orchestra. He studied violin, chamber music, and conducting in Stuttgart and Berlin, and participated in prestigious conducting workshops with Sergiu Celibidache (Munich), Leon Fleisher (Boston, Tanglewood) and Leon Barzin (Paris). Besides his performances with WDO, he regularly appears as guest conductor mainly in Germany and the USA where he was principal guest conductor of CityMusic Cleveland Orchestra from 2012 to 2024.
His professional path led him first into medicine, where he became a highly regarded internist and epidemiologist, focusing on cardiovascular disease, prevention, health economics, integrative medicine, and arts and medicine. For several years he worked at Harvard University in Boston and was from 1995 to 2025 Professor and Director of the Institute of Social Medicine, Epidemiology and Health Economics at the Charite – Universitätsmedizin Berlin. From 2012 to 2014, Stefan Willich was President of the Hanns Eisler School of Music Berlin. In 2021, he received the Alumni Award of Merit from the Harvard University T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the highest award for former graduates of the institution.
As conductor Stefan Willich led the WDO to great success. Particular highlights include performances of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in Berlin in 2010 at the World Health Summit and Mahler's Second Symphony (Resurrection) in Washington in 2011 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of September 11. He has worked together with outstanding soloists including Peter Zazofsky, Sergey Khachatryan, Tanja Becker-Bender, Aida-Carmen Soanea, Tamaki Kawakubo, Wenzel Fuchs, Anja Kampe, Jeanine De Bique, Falk Struckmann, Jochen Kowalski, Alexei Lubimov, Joseph Alessi, Xavier de Maistre, Delphine Haidan, Emily Bear, Cunmo Yin, Evelyn Glennie, Alexandru Tomescu, Kyung Sun Lee, and with international choirs including the Vienna Boys’ Choir.
