Birgitta Elisa Oftestad

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

[1] 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 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.