"Two souls, alas, are dwelling in my chest, and each is fain to leave his brother."
-from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s ‘Faust, Part I’.

Mihalj Kekenj was born in 1979 in Braunschweig, Germany. Hailing from a long line of violinists, it was his destiny to also play the violin. He has a varied career that started with his completion of his musical studies as the student of Jens Ellerman and Andreas Krecher at the Robert-Schumann Conservatory of Music in Düsseldorf, where he currently resides. As the concertmaster of the Bergische Symphony, this is one part of the two souls that dwell in his chest.

There is another soul which is inextricable from the first.

Since the age of 15, MIKI has pursued a passion for composition and his production of soul-heavy hip-hop tracks. In this respect, the next obvious step for him was to combine these two styles in his first creation, “Opus 1”. He says today of his work, “I just do what I can; produce tracks and play violin. No more, no less”. In this manner, he composes, arranges, produces, and performs with artists that fit well into this very special musical concept. This has given him a certainty for of where he belongs in the artistic world.

In the past few years, MIKI has given several performances at MADE in Berlin, combining all different art forms in a myriad of ways with artists such as Aloe Blacc, Erykah Badu, and the painter Jaybo. Currently, he has a series at the Philharmonie in Essen, Germany, where he has used his compositional and arranging skills to create the series Takeover!, a collaboration of jazz, pop, or R&B singers and classical ensembles that ‘takeover’ a concert hall setting. With the Takeover! Ensemble, MIKI and his colleagues have had the pleasure of performing and touring with such artists as Max Mutzke, Cassandra Steen, Axel Bosse, and the DJ team Moonbootica.

Most recently, Miki has introduced a new component to his artistic projects. “Speak” is a music education collaboration with the Baroque orchestra Concerto Cologne and the Cologne Philharmonie. With two eighth grade classes, he created rap lyrics and hip-hop remixes of W.A. Mozart’s Requiem, integrated said lyrics into the Requiem, and performed with the students for a nearly sold-out audience in the Cologne Philharmonie. Guest rapper for the evening was Megaloh, an artist out of Berlin who brought an important authenticity to the evening. The students worked for months, discovering their own creative potential and a regard for both classical and contemporary music. Realizing Miki’s idea of working with youth, this project successfully brought two different worlds together through hard work and mutual respect.