Sara Valencia Villeta

Born in Madrid, Spain, in 1999. From 2017 to 2023, she studied at the Reina Sofía School of Music’s Telefónica Violin Chair, first with professor Marco Rizzi and later with professor Christoph Poppen. Her Majesty Queen Sofía handed her the Diploma to the most outstanding student of her chair in the 2022-2023 academic year.

She studied the elementary degree at the Santa Cecilia Academy with Emilio Maravella and the professional degree at the Adolfo Salazar Conservatory with Anna Baget. She continued her training at the Katarina Gurska School of Music with Sergey Teslya, and has attended masterclasses by Mariana Todorova, Mari Tampere, Vera Martínez-Mehner, Keiko Wataya, Manuel Guillén, Agustín León Ara, Oliver Wille, and Silvia Marcovici, as well as by Christoph Poppen, Miriam Fried, and Torleif Thedéen, Giovanni Guzzo, Linus Roth, Ana Chumachenco, Mihaela Martin, Ralf Gothóni (groups with piano), and Krzysztof Chorzelski (string ensembles). She has been awarded in several national and international competitions (Pozuelo de Alarcón in 2013; City of Xàtiva Young Performers, Marie Cantagrill and Llanes in 2014; Cuenca’s Young Performers in 2015. She has also won the “Clásicos y Reverentes” TV show, which led her to represent Spain at the 2018 Eurovision Young Musicians. She has performed in renowned venues as soloist and in chamber ensembles such as the philharmonic orchestras of Gijón, Avilés and Oviedo in Ciudad Real and Madrid, as well as the 32nd Clásicos en Verano Festival, among others. In 2016 she was a member of the Verbier Festival Junior Orchestra (Switzerland).

As a student of the School, she has been part of the Freixenet Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Jaime Martín, Víctor Pablo Pérez, Plácido Domingo, Péter Eötvös, Andrés Orozco-Estrada, Sir András Schiff, Pablo González, Pablo Heras-Casado, and Juanjo Mena and that of the Fundación EDP Camerata under the baton of Anne-Sophie Mutter and Christoph Poppen. In 2021 she participated in the 30th anniversary tour of the School with the Freixenet Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Andrés Orozco-Estrada, with whom she performed at Madrid's Teatro Real, at Bratislava's Reduta Hall, at Budapest's Liszt Ferenc Academy and at Vienna's Musikverein. She has also been a member of the Bartók Duo, the Casa de la Moneda Scarlatti Quintet, the Puertos del Estado Haendel and the Mendelssohn quartets, and the Banco de España Arriaga Ensemble.