Anna Magdalena Kokits was born in Vienna in 1988. She started playing the piano at the age of four, later received a few years of violin tuition, and went on to study piano performance with Alejandro Geberovich at the Music and Arts University of the City Vienna where she graduated in 2014 with distinction.

As a young pianist she already performed with orchestras such as the Tonkünstler Orchestra Niederösterreich, the Moscow Virtuosi and the Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra. She is a prizewinner of several national and international piano competitions (among them a Special Prize at the International Beethoven Competition Vienna in 2009).

Anna Magdalena Kokits has performed repeatedly at prestigious concert halls including the Musikverein Wien, the Wiener Konzerthaus and the Concertgebouw Amsterdam. She has been a guest at international music festivals such as the Brahmsfest Mürzzuschlag, the Carinthian Summer Music Festival, the Quincena Musical de San Sebastián, the Musikalischer Sommer in Ostfriesland and the Festival St. Gallen.

Starting in 2007 Anna Magdalena Kokits has been teaching and coaching pianists both in long-term pedagogical collaborations as well as international master classes and piano and chamber music courses, for example at the International Music Centre Haus Marteau, Germany; the Academy of Arts at the University Priština, Kosovo; the Cairo Conservatoire of Music, Egypt; the Nairobi University und Kenyatta University, Kenya, the Conservatory of Music in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and most recently at the Vienna Piano Summer School.

Anna Magdalena Kokits has always had a pronounced interest in lesser known or forgotten works and composers, and dedicates a lot of her time to the promotion of female composers and composers who were forced into exile. In her concert programmes she likes to combine pianistic core repertoire with these (re-)discoveries as well as contemporary classical music.

Along with pursuing her solo career, she has made chamber music one of the main focuses of her activity: From 2007 to 2014 she formed a duo with cellist Alexander Gebert (former member of the Altenber Trio Wien), performing at major venues across Europe and beyond and producing a recording of sonatas by Hans Gál, Ernst Toch, Erich Zeisl and Karl Weigl. Other chamber music partners of renown include Gidon Kremer, Dimitri Ashkenazy, Christoph Koncz, Eduard Brunner, Rudolf Leopold (Wiener Streichsextett), Chen Halevi, Lars Wouters van den Oudenweijer, Herbert Kefer (Artis Quartet), Klaus Christa, Lily Francis, Alexey Stadler, the Bennewitz Quartet et al.

In 2008 Anna Magdalena Kokits met the Austrian composer Richard Dünser, an encounter which resulted in the dedication of his work “The Garden of Desires” (2010) to her and Alexander Gebert as well as an ongoing interest in contemporary classical music. Anna Magdalena Kokits has been dedicated several works, she has collaborated closely with many living composers and has performed as well as premiered pieces by Tomasz Skweres, Heinz Karl Gruber, Thomas Larcher, Helmut Schmidinger, Manuela Kerer, Kurt Schwertsik, Lukas Haselböck, Christoph Renhart, René Clemencic, Valentin Silvestrov, Philippe Hersant and Vivian Fung, among others.

In 2016 she was selected by the Austrian Foreign Ministry to be part of the music promotion program NASOM (New Austrian Sound of Music) and to perform internationally as a representative of Austria for Contemporary Music.

Ever since recording Ernst Toch’s Sonata for Cello and Piano in 2012 Anna Magdalena Kokits has been fascinated by his music, which led to her recording a CD with his piano works a few years later. The recording includes several world premiere recordings and was published with the record label Capriccio in 2017. Preparing this recording project Anna Magdalena Kokits dedicated considerable time to learn about the topic and history of jewish composers in exile. As part of her research she spent time with Toch’s musical estate at the UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) and visited Toch’s grandson, writer Lawrence Weschler, for interviews in New York.

For Anna Magdalena Kokits her international concert activity, which has led her to Germany, France, Belgium, Great Britain, Finland, Norway, Spain, Italy, Hungary, Slovenia, Poland, Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Russia, Mexico, Israel, Palestine, Egypt, Kenya, South Africa, China, Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Qatar, Canada, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Kosovo and the United States of America, also serves as a platform for cultural and artistic exchange. Hence she often connects her concert travels with teaching master classes, visiting schools and universities as well as cultural institutions and events, and initiating musical collaborations.