Michi Gaigg was born in Schörfling at the Attersee, Austria (Salzkammergut). She was strongly influenced by Nikolaus Harnoncourt during her violin studies at the Salzburg Mozarteum and subsequently continued studies of the Baroque violin with Ingrid Seifert and Sigiswald Kuijken. Michi Gaigg was a member of internationally acclaimed ensembles and worked together with Frans Brüggen, Alan Curtis, Christopher Hogwood, René Jacobs, Ton Koopman and Hermann Max.

Michi Gaigg founded the Baroque orchestra L’Arpa Festante Munich in 1983 (direction until 1995) and profited from many valuable experiences as member of internationally renowned ensembles, working with Frans Brüggen, Alan Curtis, Christopher Hogwood, René Jacobs, Ton Koopman and Hermann Max. After having lived in London, The Hague, Munich, Cologne, Strasbourg and Tübingen she returned to Austria in 1996.
During this year she founded the L'Orfeo Baroque Orchestra together with the recorder and oboe player Carin van Heerden. Under Michi Gaigg's direction the orchestra has established itself as one of the leading ensembles in historically informed performance practice and has repeatedly been awarded various prizes for its CD recordings: Diapason, Pizzicato (Supersonic Award), Choc du Monde de la Musique and Radio Österreich 1 (Pasticcio-Preis).

Michi Gaigg's pedagogical career started in 1987 at the Conservatoire National de Strasbourg amid extensive activities as instrumentalist and conductor. She has been teaching at the Institute for Early Music at the Anton Bruckner Private University in Linz since 1994. In 2003 she took on the position of artistic director of the donauFESTWOCHEN im strudengau, a festival for Early and Contemporary music.
Michi Gaigg was awarded the "Grosser Bühnenkunstpreis" of the province of Upper Austria in April 2008.

Opera productions are becoming increasingly important in Michi Gaigg’s work, a.o. Georg Philipp Telemann’s Don Quichotte auf der Hochzeit des Comacho (2003), Zaide by W. A. Mozart (2005) and Romeo und Julie by Georg Anton Benda (2007).

Productions planned for 2009/10 are Gioachino Rossini’s Il signor Bruschino, Joseph Haydn’s L’isola disabitata, Georg Friedrich Handel’s Almira, Königin von Kastilien and Georg Philipp Telemann’s, Orpheus, oder Die wunderbare Beständigkeit der Liebe.

Interviews & Portraits:

Laudatio zur Verleihung des Bühnenkunstpreises an Michi Gaigg by Norbert Trawöger

Toccata 17/ May-June 2005 (pdf file)

Concerto 187/ October 2003 (pdf file)