Fernando Martinez Zavala

Martinez Fernando Zavala, born in 1992 in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, began playing the oboe at the age of 13 at the Escuela Nacional de Música (National School of Music) under the guidance of Marlon Herrera. At the age of 18, he moved to Leipzig and was accepted into Nick Deutsch’s oboe class at the Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy University of Music and Theater. In 2015, he moved to Tel Aviv, Israel, to study with Dudu Carmel at the Buchmann Mehta Music Academy. He gained his first professional experience with the Israel Chamber Orchestra from 2016 to July 2018. In the winter of 2018, he returned to Germany to continue his studies with Nick Deutsch in Leipzig.
As a soloist, Martinez Fernando Zavala won 4th prize at the 2016 Israeli Woodwind Competition and was a semifinalist at the Geneva Music Competition. With his woodwind quintet, the “Pacific Quintet,” he won 2nd prize at the prestigious Carl Nielsen Chamber Music Competition in Copenhagen in 2019 and 1st prize at the “Ton und Erklärung” competition in 2021. He has also participated in major youth orchestra programs such as the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, the Pacific Music Festival, the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie, and the Masterworks Festival in the USA.
He has performed with leading orchestras including the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, the Essen Philharmonic, and the Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne.
Since January 2020, Martinez Fernando Zavala has been associate principal oboist of the Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra.