Quatuor Ebene

Attending a concert by the Quatuor Ébène is a musical and sensual happening. In the past two decades the quartet has set standards by making familiar repertoire accessible in new ways beyond perfection, and by constantly seeking the exchange with the audience.  After studies with the Quatuor Ysaÿe in Paris as well as with Gábor Takács, Eberhard Feltz and György Kurtág, the unprecedented and outstanding success at the 2004 ARD Music Competition followed. Quatuor Ébène’s albums, with recordings of Bartók, Beethoven, Debussy, Haydn, Fauré and the Mendelssohn siblings, have received numerous awards, including Gramophone, BBC Music Magazine, and the Midem Classic Award. In January 2021, the quartet was appointed by the University of Music and Performing Arts in Munich to establish a String Quartet class as part of the newly founded „Quatuor Ébène Academy“. Highlights of this season include concerts at the Salzburg Festival, Berliner Philharmonie, Megaron Athens, Wigmore Hall London and Carnegie Hall in New York City, NY.

Julius Drake

The pianist Julius Drake lives in London and enjoys an international reputation as one of the finest instrumentalists in his field, collaborating with many of the world’s leading artists, both in recital and on disc. His passionate interest in song has led to invitations to devise song series for Wigmore Hall, London; The Concertgebouw, Amsterdam; 92nd Street Y, New York; and the Pierre Boulez Saal, Berlin. Julius Drake’s many recordings include a widely acclaimed series with Gerald Finley for Hyperion Records of which ‘Songs by Samuel Barber’, ‘Schumann: Dichterliebe & other Heine Settings’ and ‘Britten: Songs & Proverbs of William Blake’ won the 2007, 2009 and 2011 Gramophone Awards; recordings with Ian Bostridge and Alice Coote for EMI; with Joyce DiDonato, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson and Matthew Polenzani for Wigmore Live; and with Anna Prohaska for Alpha. Julius Drake is Professor of Collaborative Piano at the Guildhall School of Music in London and he is regularly invited to give masterclasses worldwide.

Elisabeth Leonskaja

For decades now, Elisabeth Leonskaja has been among the most celebrated pianists of our time. Born in Tbilisi, Georgia, to a Russian family, she gave her first concerts as early as age 11. Her exceptional talent soon brought her to study at the Moscow Conservatory. While still a student at the Conservatory, she won prizes in the prestigious Enescu, Marguerite Long and Queen Elizabeth international piano competitions. In addition to her many solo engagements, chamber music remains an important part of her work. She has performed many times with string quartets, such as the Belcea, Borodin Artemis and Jerusalem quartets. She also had a longstanding musical friendship with the Alban Berg Quartet, and their piano quintet recordings are legendary. In her second homeland, Austria, Elisabeth Leonskaja is an honorary member of the Vienna Konzerthaus. In 2006 she was awarded the Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art, First Class, for her outstanding service to the culture of the country. It is the highest award in Austria. In Georgia, she was named Priestess of Art in 2016, this country’s highest artistic honor. In 2020 she received the International Classical Music (ICMA) Lifetime Achievement Award.

Thomas Ades

Hugo Ticciati

As violinist and director Hugo imbibes all possible forms of creativity, whether it be performing premieres in Carnegie Hall, improvising with monks in India, or devising innovative programmes for O/Modernt, which he founded in 2011.

Alongside his passion to discover and learn from music of all ages and traditions, Hugo embraces the world of contemporary music. Over thirty works have been written for Hugo by composers such as Erkki-Sven Tüür, Peteris Vasks and Judith Weir. He is artist in resident with the Manchester Camerata and principal guest conductor of the Orchestra da Camera di Perugia.

Hugo regularly gives masterclasses and seminars on violin teaching, and lectures on music-related subjects all over the world. A recent highlight of the past years was a two-week stay in an ashram at the foot of the Himalayas chanting by day and playing Bach by night. Hugo still lives in the blissful state of mobilephonelessness and has recently been captivated by the work of the French philosopher, Henri Bergson.

Reto Bieri

The Swiss clarinettist and improviser Reto Bieri has been playing solo and chamber music for over 20 years. This former artistic director is currently bringing a fresh concept to the classical music scene with his brilliant, poetic theme evenings ‘à la DAVOS FESTIVAL’ in cooperation with various chamber orchestras and accompanied by long-standing chamber music partners – in particular violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja. Reto Bieri regularly performs with renowned orchestras, and at various festivals and prestigious institutions. He releases CD recordings with the Munich-based cult label ECM, most recently the highly praised album ‘quasi morendo’ with string quartet meta4 from Finland.

Reto Bieri grew up with Swiss folk music. Following formative experience playing dance music in taverns and training as a primary school teacher he initially attended music academies in Basel and Zurich, before studying at the prestigious Juilliard School of Music in New York. He was particularly influenced by the composer György Kurtág and his encounters with the writer Gerhard Meier, musician Eberhard Feltz and the clown Dimitri.

Reto Bieri served as Artistic Director of the Swiss DAVOS FESTIVAL – young artists in concert between 2013 and 2018. During 2012 to 2022, he was professor for chamber music at the University of Music in Würzburg, Germany. In 2022, he accepted a position at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Munich, Germany, where he is now Professor of chamber music. He lives with his family in a remote Swiss Alpine location in the Bernese Oberland.

Natalie Clein

Natalie Clein, born in the UK won both the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition and the Eurovision Competition for Young Musicians at the age of 16. As a student, she received the Queen Elizabeth Prize and the Queen Mother Scholarship from the Royal College of Music before completing her studies with Heinrich Schiff in Vienna. She now teaches at the Royal College of Music in London and at the Rostock University of Music and Theatre. As a soloist, Natalie Clein has performed with all the major British orchestras, including the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, the Montreal Symphony, the Orchestre de Lyon, the New Zealand Symphony and the Orquesta Filarmónica de Buenos Aires. As a chamber music partner, she works with artists such as Martha Argerich, Ian Bostridge, Imogen Cooper, Lars Vogt and Pekka Kuusisto. In 2015, Natalie Clein was appointed Artist in Residence and Director of Music Performance at the University of Oxford for four years, taking a leading role in concert programming, developing new artistic projects and introducing new teaching methods.

Guy Johnston

Guy Johnston is one of the most exciting British cellists of his generation. His early successes included winning the BBC Young Musician of the Year, and significant awards, notably the Shell London Symphony Orchestra Gerald MacDonald Award, Suggia Gift Award and a Young British Classical Performer Brit Award. He has performed with many leading international orchestras including the London Philharmonic, NHK Symphony Orchestra,BBC Symphony, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo, and St Petersburg Symphony. Most recently, he has been the featured soloist of Taverner’s ‘The Protecting Veil’ for Britten’s Sinfonia 2024 UK and Ireland tour receiving critical acclaim in The Guardian and the Arts Desk. Guy is Associate Professor of Cello at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York and a guest Professor of Cello at the Royal Academy of Music, where he was awarded an Hon. ARAM in 2015.

Polina Leschenko

Polina Leschenko was born in St. Petersburg into a family of musicians and received her first piano lessons with her father at the age of six. Just two years later, she made her debut with the Leningrad Symphony Orchestra in St. Petersburg. At the age of 12, Polina made her debut at London’s Barbican Hall with Beethoven’s 5th Piano Concerto. Since then, Polina Leschenko has worked with major orchestras such as the Salzburg Camerata, the Hallé Orchestra, the London Mozart Players, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, the Bern Symphony Orchestra, the Russian National Orchestra, the I Pomeriggi Musicali in Milan, the Orquesta de Euskadi and the Australian Chamber Orchestra. Polina has given concerts in renowned concert halls such as the Konzerthaus in Vienna, the Mozarteum in Salzburg, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Berlin Philharmonie, Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in New York, the Cité de la musique in Paris and the Sydney Opera House. As an accomplished and admired chamber musician, Polina Leschenko also appears frequently at many festivals, including the Salzburg Festival, the Progetto Martha Argerich Festival in Lugano, the Verbier Festival, the Risor Festival of Chamber Music, in Stavanger, la Roque d’Anthéron Aldeburgh, Oxford, Cheltenham, Stift, Istanbul, Lockenhaus and at the Musiktage Mondsee.

Emma Bonnici

Tetiana Lutsyk

Tetiana Lutsyk, the violinist with a broad musical spectrum as a chamber musician, soloist, orchestral musician and teacher studied with Prof. Sergey Evdokimov in Kharkiv and Prof. Mariya Futorska in Ukraine as well as with Prof. Leonid Sorokow in Zagreb and Prof. Priya Mitchell in Graz. She is the Prizewinner of many international competitions and has performed as a soloist with renowned orchestras, including the RTVE Symphony Orchestra Madrid, Orquestra de València, Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra, Lviv Philharmonic Orchestra, Lviv Chamber Orchestra, Ivano-Frankivsk Philharmonic Orchestra, Girardi Ensemble. Tetiana Lutsyk has been concertmaster of the Liechtenstein Symphony Orchestra since 2021. Tetiana has performed as a soloist and chamber musician at many renowned international music festivals such as the Oxford Chamber Music Festival.

Sascha Bota

Sascha Bota, Violist born in Timisoara, Romania was studying with Gérard Caussé in Madrid, with Thomas Riebl in Salzburg as well as with Walter Levin from the LaSalle Quartet for a post graduate quartet course in Basel. Since he has had the opportunity to play in chamber groups with musicians including Thomas Zehetmair, Benjamin Schmid, Leonidas Kavakos and principal players of the Berliner Philarmonie, the Doric Quartet and the Hagen Quartet. As a soloist, he has performed with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, the Zurich Chamber Orchestra and Philharmonia Banatul amongst others. Sascha has been playing as principal  viola with numerous of orchestras such as the Camerata Salzburg and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique. He also successfully won auditions for  the Solo Viola of the Zurich Chamber Orchestra as well as the Australian Chamber Orchestra, where he was appointed as a core member shortly after. Sascha is dedicated to jazz and other forms of improvised music and regularly appears at jazz concerts and festivals.

Sally Bayley

Sally Bayley is a writer of fiction and non-fiction. As a child, she absorbed the sounds and rhythms of poetry, ballads and folksongs, and these patterns inform the structure of her story-telling. In 1990, Sally was the first child to go to university from West Sussex County Council Care services. She studied at St Andrews university, and then went to America, where she taught aesthetic education in midwestern schools and universities and foundation arts courses to adults in inner city Ohio. She is interested in the Liberal Arts model of education and believes anyone can think or write to a high level with the right encouragement and practice. One reader has described her books as rhapsodies which means ‘to stitch a song.’ Sally is currently a Lecturer in English at Hertford College, Oxford. She also teaches on the Sarah Lawrence visiting programme at Wadham College, Oxford. From 2018-2020 she was a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Oxford Brookes University.

O/Modernt

O/Modernt (Swedish for ‘Un/Modern’) is the innovative concept devised a decade ago by violinist, conductor and artistic director Hugo Ticciati. Combining old and new in unexpected ways, O/Modernt celebrates connectivity in and through the arts, aiming to bring about a heightened awareness of connections that span times, cultures and peoples. Our international programme of activities is focused on exploring artistic links between contemporary culture and the cultures of previous epochs, bringing together people from all walks of life, and re/connecting people with themselves by promoting active, imaginative engagement with music and the arts. Outward-looking, inclusive and passionate about breaking down boundaries, O/Modernt’s philosophy is encapsulated in our motto, borrowed from John Cage: Invent the past. Revise the future. Taking the past as an inexhaustible source of inspiration for artists working in every creative field, the O/Modernt spirit of reinvention finds expression in an expansive array of performances, events and projects.

Priya Mitchell

Priya grew up in Oxford and studied with David Takeno in London and Zachar Bron in Germany. She was then chosen as British representative of the European Concert Halls Organisation ‘Rising Stars’ Series. This led to highly acclaimed tours and performances with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, English Chamber Orchestra, London Mozart Players, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and the Philharmonia. Priya’s highly acclaimed Oxford Chamber Music Festival inspired The Daily Telegraph to call it ‘a musical miracle’.

Marc Sabbah

Marc Sabbah, born 1988 in New York City is a viola soloist, chamber musician, professor and as of 2012, the viola soloist of the Belgian National Orchestra. Described as”a magnificent player” by legendary conductor Zubin Mehta, Marc is regularly invited as guest Principal Violist of the Israeli Philharmonic. As of September 2017, he has been teaching viola as a guest professor at the Royal Conservatory of Mons, Belgium. Graduating Cum Laude from the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, Marc was a pupil of Sven Arne Tepl and Nobuko Imai. His recent awards include the 1st prize at the 2016 Rising Stars Grand Prix music competition performing solo at the Berlin Philharmonic hall as well as his recent 1st Grand Prize at the Manhattan International Music Competition with a recital at Carnegie Hall. Having played numerous concerti with European orchestras such as the Belgian National Orchestra, Caso Philharmonic, de Filharmonie Amsterdam, the Hochreinisches Kammerorchester, Marc Sabbah is creating a path as a musical force of his generation. Since 2016, Marc is collaborating with Belgian pianist Eliane Reyes forming the Duo Sabbah-Reyes, a unique duo dedicated to exploring the philosophical and emotional viola and piano repertoire.

Jordi Carrasco Hjelm

Jordi Carrasco Hjelm is a Swedish classical double bass player working with chamber music and improvisation. He studied classical double bass with Rick Stotijn and Olivier Thiery and finished his studies in Conservatorium van Amsterdam with a Masters degree in improvisation studying with the jazz violinist Tim Kliphuis. He lives in the Netherlands where he is a core member of the Asko Schönberg Ensemble who are a leading ensemble in the field of contemporary music. As a passionate advocate for free improvisation on stages for classical music and for chamber music as an inherently improvisational form he has performed in many European chamber music festivals such as the Oxford Chamber Music Festival, Internationaal Kamermuziek Festival Utrecht, Felix! Festival Köln, Ghent Festival, Miesbach Kammermusik festival, KMF Eibergen, KMF Sylt and most notably as a regular guest in Musikdorf Ernen in Switzerland.

Claude Frochaux

Swiss-Italian cellist Claude Frochaux began playing the cello at the age of six at the Suzuki Talent Center, then at the Conservatory of Turin. Studies followed in Frankfurt with Michael Sanderling, where he completed his diploma and his concert examination with the highest rating in the soloist class, as well as postgraduate studies with honours in Essen and Madrid. Besides Italy and other European countries, solo and chamber music concerts have brought him to North and South America, India and China with performances in halls such as the Wigmore Hall and King’s Place London, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Alte Oper Frankfurt, Konzerthaus Berlin, Kölner Philharmonie, Musikverein Wien, Parco della Musica Roma, Auditorium Sony Madrid, Arvo Pärt Centre Estonia, as well as the NCPA Theatre Mumbai and Teatro del Lago Chile. In 2008 he founded Monte Piano Trio with which he has won numerous international prizes -Maria Canals Barcelona, Schumann Frankfurt, Folkwang Prize Essen, Brahms Austria, European Chamber Music Competition Karlsruhe. He plays in ensembles such as O/Modernt Stockholm, Chamber Orchestra of Europe or Ensemble Midtwest Denmark and he has gained experience through the years with several orchestras such as Bamberger Symphoniker, English Chamber Orchestra, Stuttgarter Kammerorchester, Pomeriggi musicali di Milano, Orchestra Filarmonica di Torino, Spira Mirabilis.Claude Frochaux is the artistic director of Kammermusikfest Sylt, an international chamber music festival that is held on the German island every year since 2012.

Dirk Mommertz

Dirk Mommertz, originally a violinist, studied in Karlsruhe, Frankfurt, Paris and Cologne. He is a multiple international award-winning pianist and member of the renowned Fauré Quartet, which performs worldwide in the most important concert halls such as London’s Wigmore Hall, the Berlin Philharmonie, the Teatro Colon Buenos Aires, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, the Tonhalle Zurich, Tokyo, Paris and New York. Their award-winning recordings on Deutsche Grammophon and Sony Classical have highlighted the quartet as a pioneering ensemble at home in both classical and experimental contemporary repertoire. Dirk Mommertz has performed as a soloist with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, the Duisburg Philharmonic and the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra, among others. From 2000 to 2005, Dirk Mommertz was a lecturer in piano at the Karlsruhe University of Music. After 2005, he was Professor of Chamber Music at the conservatories in Essen and Nuremberg before being appointed Head of the Chamber Music Department at the University of Music and Theatre in Munich in 2015, where he has been Vice President since 2019. His other teaching activities include public masterclasses all over the world. His students have won prizes at the ARD Competition, the International Chamber Music Competition in Melbourne, the Concours Maria Canals Barcelona, Mendelssohn Competition Berlin, Concours international de Chambre de Lyon, Parkhouse Award London, German Music Competition, European Chamber Music Competition, Schubert und die Moderne Graz, Beethoven Competition Bonn, Brahms Competition Pörtschach, Haydn Competition Vienna and many others.

Emmanuel Despax

Brian O`Kane

British cellist Brian O’Kane enjoys a busy career as both soloist and chamber musician. Since winning first prize at the Windsor International String Competition in 2008, he has made his debuts with the RTE National Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra under Ashkenazy and in recital at the Wigmore Hall. Brian is a former “Rising Star” of Ireland’s National Concert Hall and he recently recorded his debut CD for the Champs Hill label.

An avid chamber musician, Brian enjoys playing as a member of the Cappa Ensemble and Navarra Quartet. He has collaborated with a wide variety of artists such as Michael Collins, Aleksandar Madzar, Anthony Marwood, Pekka Kuusisto, Lawrence Power, Antoine Tamestit and Sir James Galway. Brian has also performed at concert halls and festivals throughout the world such as Sydney Opera House, Suntory Hall Tokyo, Seoul Arts Centre, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, West Cork, Radio France-Montpellier, Lockenhaus and the Weesp Chamber Music Festival, Holland of which his quartet are the artistic directors.

A graduate of both the Royal Academy of Music and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, Brian‘s biggest influences have come from Louise Hopkins and at Prussia Cove, Aldeburgh & Chamber Studio from studies with Ralph Kirshbaum, Steven Isserlis, Ferenc Rados and Eberhard Feltz.