Conductor
Prof. Dr. Stefan Willich
Stefan Willich is the founder and conductor of the World Doctors Orchestra. He studied violin, chamber music, and conducting in Stuttgart and Berlin, and has 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 is the principal guest conductor of the CityMusic Cleveland Orchestra.
His professional path, however, first led him 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 in 1995 was appointed Professor and Director of the Institute of Social Medicine, Epidemiology and Health Economics at the Charite – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, a post he continues to hold to this day. 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 music director he led WDO to great success. Particular highlights include performances of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in Berlin in 2010 for 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, Xavier de Maistre, Delphine Haidan, Emily Bear, Cunmo Yin, Evelyn Glennie, Alexandru Tomescu and with the Vienna Boys’ Choir.
