Born in Salzburg in 1959, Tscho Theissing studied violin, jazz and musicology at the Mozarteum Salzburg and in Graz, butalso gained valuable experience as an electric guitarist in a rock band, as a street musician and as partner to actors and cabaret artists. He was Principal Second Violinist of the Vienna Volksoper’s orchestra 1990 - 2016, alongside membership of various ensembles such as the Motus Quartet (a jazz string quartet), international jazz quartet pago libre and the Viennese music combo Roland Neuwirth Extremschrammeln.

His work as an arranger and composer was shaped by his collaboration with Burgtheater doyen Michael Heltau. For 20 years Tscho Theissing exclusively organised Heltau’s chanson evenings with the Wiener Theatermusiker, an ensemble founded by himself, for renowned theatres such as the Burgtheater, the Akademietheater and the Theater an der Wien. He conceived and arranged several full-length programmes for mezzo-soprano Elisabeth Kulman, such as “La femme c’est moi”, which had, among other venues, appearances at Wiener Staatsoper and Tokyo Spring Festival and has also been made into a film, as well as Kulman’s contribution to the Dresdner Staatskapelle’s New Year’s Eve concert and live TV broadcasting on ZDF under Christian Thielemann. Artists as diverse as jazz bassist Avishai Cohen, the Japanese trio Tsukemen, bassist Georg Breinschmid, violinist Benjamin Schmid, ensembles like The Clarinotts, Amarcord Wien, Vienna Symphonic, Tonkünstler Orchester Niederösterreich and Stuttgarter Kammerorchester as well as renowned actors like Cornelius Obonya and Juergen Maurer trust in his compositional inventiveness.

At the Wiener Kammeroper his arrangements of Bizet’s Carmen for four singers and three musicians (2016) and Donizetti’s Don Pasquale for four singers and seven musicians (2017) were a big hit. His opera Genia oder das Lächeln der Maschine, commissioned for the Beethoven anniversary 2020, could not be premiered due to the Covid lockdowns. At the open air summer festival Operette Langenlois in 2021 he conducted his tongue-in-cheek new version of Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus.

From 2013 on Tscho Theissing has also been working for the Children and Youth Opera Camps of the Vienna Philharmonic and the Salzburg Festival every summer, conceiving, arranging and sometimes conducting special versions of opera masterpieces for young people.