Limits are trained, not inherited.

Ignacio Videla plays the viola in rooms that were not built for it. A vineyard at sunset, a recital hall, a club at four in the morning — the instrument is the same, and so is the way he plays it.

Argentine-Spanish and based in the Netherlands, he currently plays with Symphonia Assai in Belgium and works across a range most classically trained players never cross: recitals and chamber music on one side, ceremonies, private events and live sets with DJs on the other. He composes and writes every arrangement he performs, which is why the music of an event can be built around one song that matters rather than picked off a list.

Nine years on stage, seven of them in professional orchestras in Argentina: the Orquesta Sinfónica de la UNCuyo and the Orquesta Filarmónica de Mendoza, and a season with the Orquesta Sinfónica de San Juan, a position won by audition. He has played principal viola at the Huilo Huilo Festival in Chile, appeared as a soloist with orchestra, and composed and arranged for the Orquesta Sinfónica de Mendoza. Argentina’s INAMU funded the orchestral recording of a work of his own.

He holds a degree in viola from the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, completed with the highest distinction, trained on full scholarships at the Berlin Opera Academy and Dickinson College in the United States, and is completing a Master of Music at Conservatorium Maastricht. His teachers have been Mihai Cocea, Daniel Sánchez, Daniel Brye, Fernando Giunta and Carmen Saraví.

Off stage he trains as a strength and endurance athlete, and brings the same stamina to a three-hour event as to a recital. He plays a viola built by the Mendoza luthier Matías Cara in 2020.