Lev Sivkov, winner of the 2015 Naumburg Cello Award, began to play the cello at the age of five. Since 2017 he has served as principal cellist of the Zurich Opera in Switzerland. Prior to that he was principal cellist of the Royal Danish Opera in Copenhagen, Denmark.

On the occasion of his US debut in San Francisco in January 2016, Joshua Kosman stated i the San Francisco Gate, “the robust young Russian cellist who made an impressive debut.” continuing about Lev’s performance of Khachaturian’s Sonata-Fantasy in C, “this 15-minute showpiece amounts to a freewheeling catalog of everything a successsful cellist needs to be able to do – from rapid-fire passagework to broad, soulful oratory – and Sivkov dug into the music like a dog attacking a T-bone."

From 2005-2009, Lev was a student at the Music-Academy in Basle, Switzerland where he studied with Ivan Monighetti. He later attended the Music-Academy in Stuttgart, Germany with Conradin Brotbeck, and in Freiburg with Jean-Guihen Queyras. He has participated in master classes with Janos Starker at Indiana University, Wolfgang Schmidt at the Kronberg Mupsic Festival, Germany, and Ferenc Rados at the Prussia Cove Music Seminars, England.

Among other first prize awards are the Julio Cardona String Performers International Competition (Covilha, Portugal); the Dominick Cello Prize at the International Competition (Stuttgart, Germany), and Gavrilin International Music Competition (Vologda, Germany). In addition, he was awarded the Prize of the Jury at the International Lutoslawski Cello Competition (Warsaw, Poland).

Lev plays a cello by Vincenzo Postiglione, Naples, 1893.