Birgitta Elisa Oftestad

Birgitta Elisa Oftestad (born 12 May 2002) is a Norwegian cellist and winner of the 2018 Virtuos competition.

Biography
Oftestad was born in Oslo, started playing cello at the age of 5, and is a student at Barratt Due Institute of Music with Ole Eirik Ree as main teacher. She has been a part of their talent program since 2012. She was a soloist at Oslo Chamber Music Festival and played at the Festspillene i Bergen, where she participated with Crescendo's chamber music program in 2016 with the clarinet trio DaNiBi. She also played as a soloist at many other concerts in Norway and internationally, and has won a lot of prizes, both as chamber musician and soloist. Among these are the Midgard Competition, Young Musicians in Tallinn, Sparre-Olsen Competition and Youth Music Championship, where she was a superfinalist in 2017.

Honors

 * 2017: Winner of Solistkonkurransen during the Fjord Cadenza
 * 2018: Winner of Virtuos