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Michał Prószyński is a member of Bühnen Bern’s opera ensemble, as part of which he made his debuts as Pelléas in Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande and Mime in Wagner’s Das Rheingold. Born in Gdów, the Polish tenor studied at Hanover Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien with Marek Rzepka, who already supervised him at the Akademia Muzyczna im. Krzysztofa Pendereckiego w Krakowie. Prior to this, he studied classical guitar at the Fryderyk Chopin Music Academy in Warsaw. Michał made his stage debut in 2015 singing the leading role of Antonio in Moniuszko’s Nocleg w Apeninach and, as a guest at Staatstheater Braunschweig between 2018 and 2020, performed Alfred in Strauss’s Die Fledermaus at Schlossfestspiele Ettlingen. A dedicated Lied singer, he performed at the Second Voice and Piano Chamber Music Festival in Kraków and at the Eighth Festival of Polish Music with the Kraków Philharmonic. Michał was a finalist in the Robert Schumann Singing Competition in 2021.
German baritone Dennis Chmelensky has been praised for his “carrying power as well as subtle sensitivity to sound” (Philadelphia Inquirer). He is a former member of the Washington National Opera’s Cafritz Young Artist Program and an alumus of the Curtis Institute of Music. This season, he made his debut at the Philips Collection with Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte and workshopped the role of Sensor in Jeanine Tesori’s new opera Grounded that was commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera. Recent highlights include appearances with Opera for Peace and his debut as Don Giovanni in a Curtis / Opera Philadelphia co-production under the baton of Karina Canellakis. A devoted recitalist, Dennis has performed extensively throughout the United States and Europe, in venues such as the National Gallery of Art and at Konzerthaus Berlin. He was a National Semifinalist of the 2022 Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition and is the recipient of numerous awards. His debut album, DENNIS, was released by Sony Music.
Daniel Barrett is a baritone from Glasgow who is in his first year on the master’s course at the Royal College of Music and studies with Russell Smythe. Daniel is a Drapers’ de Turckheim Scholar and a Drake Calleja Trust Scholar, as well as an associate artist with the Josephine Baker Trust. He previously studied at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, winning and placing in multiple competitions and graduating with a First class honours degree. This year, Daniel won First Prize at the Royal College Music (RCM) Lieder Competition. He recently appeared as baritone soloist in Brahms’ Ein deutsches Requiem, performed by the RCM Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in the Amaryllis Fleming Concert Hall, under the direction of Thomas Zehetmair.
Lara Villanueva is a Maryland-based audio engineer and multi-instrumental musician known for her resourcefulness and attention to detail. Music and physics are two sides of the same coin, and Lara has always been intrigued by the relationship of sound with spaces. She has worked in a variety of environments ranging from studio and location recordings to sound reinforcement, and across genres from classical and orchestral to jazz and pop. Some of the organisations that she has recorded and mixed for are the Heifetz International Music Institute, zFestival, and various freelance projects. Originally from the northern suburbs of New York City, Lara currently studies at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University for her bachelor’s degrees in Bassoon Performance and Recording Arts and Sciences, and her master’s degree in Audio Sciences-Acoustics, and is a member of the Audio Engineering Society’s Student Delegate Assembly.
Atena Carte is a pianist born in Timisoara, Romania. She graduated from the University of Music in Timisoara, where she studied with Maria Bodo. Later on she obtained Concert and Soloist Diplomas studying with Jean-François Antonioli at the Haute Ecole de Musique de Lausanne, and a Concert Diploma in Chamber Music with Ulrich Koella and Peter Solomon at the Zürcher University or Arts.
A Swiss Confederation scholarship holder, she received as well the Paderewski Society Prize. She attended masterclasses with Jaques-Saint Yves, François René Duchable, Axel Bauni. She also earned a Certificate of Advanced Studies in cultural project management from the Haute Ecole de Musique de Genève.
Since 2007, Carte has a pianist position at the Zürcher University of Arts and since 2018 she is a piano professor at the Conservatoire de Musique de Lausanne. She is also the artistic director of the ACRISCO Festival (CrissierArts Switzerland).
Atena Carte performs regularly in concerts and has won 9 national and international awards. She appears in various festivals (St Prex Festival, Murten Classics, Musique et Montagne, Septembre musical Montreux, Piano à Saint-Ursanne ,Musique en Ecrins,France, Festival de Oravita, Roumanie, Carnegie Hall,New York, with ensemble Altaïr) and collaborates with prestigious orchestras such as Tonhalle Zürich, Opernhaus Zürich, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Orchestre de chambre de Lausanne, Bern Symphonie Orchestra. As an orchestra and chamber music musician she collaborated with conductors like Paavo Järvi, Charles Dutoit, Jaap van Zweden, John Eliot Gardiner, David Reiland, and for contemporary music with John Adams, Helmut Lachenmann, Matthias Pintscher, and Pierre-André Valade.
She has recorded several CDs, including works by Piazzola, Messiaen and Raphael.
Carte has been the Coordinator of the Verbier Festival’s piano class since 2o21.
Sébastien Jurczys is a music director, pianist, composer, arranger and stage director. In 2011, he created his first multidisciplinary show with symphony orchestra, choirs and soloists (including Natacha Kowalski). He has also created numerous musical projects at the Le Moderne theatre with director Sarah Cerri (Le Cabaret des Hommes Perdus, Into the Woods, Once Upon a Mattress). Jurczys has performed with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Liège in L’Orchestre à la portée des enfants and with Musiques Nouvelles (Jean-Paul Dessy) as a laureate of the Young Composers Forum 2013. In 2017, he wrote Bottez Le Chat, a musical tale with Didier Colfs, among others. Since 2018 to 2021, he has taught accompaniment at the Conservatoire Royal de Liège, from which he graduated in piano and music education. He is also a graduate of the Koninklijk Conservatorium Brussel (composition). Currently, Mr Jurczys is preparing for Various Voices 2026 (the European LGBTQ+ choir festival) with the choir ‘Sing Out Brussels’.
Errollyn Wallen — ‘renaissance woman of contemporary British music’ (The Observer) — is as respected a singer-songwriter of pop influenced songs as she is a composer of contemporary new music. Communication is at the centre of both worlds: engaging the audience, speaking directly to hearts and minds.
Born in Belize, Errollyn Wallen gave up her training at the Dance Theater of Harlem, New York to study composition at the universities of London and Cambridge. She founded her own Ensemble X, and its motto ’We don’t break down barriers in music… we don’t see any’ reflects her genuine, free-spirited approach and eclectic musicianship. She has been commissioned by outstanding music institutions from the BBC to the Royal Opera House and performed her songs internationally.
Hervé Sellin was born in 1957 in Paris. He started playing trumpet, then trombone and did classical piano studies at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Paris with Aldo Ciccolini. He obtained, in 1980, a double prize of piano and chamber music.
During the same period his father, great French trumpet player Pierre Sellin, introduced him into Jazz. So he started playing with great soloists such as Sonny Grey, Guy Lafitte, Gérard Badini, Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, Joe Newman, Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson, Harry “Sweets” Edison, Art Farmer, Barney Wilen, Clifford Jordan, James Moody, Chet Baker, Slide Hampton…
In 1984, he met Johnny Griffin and played in his European quartet for 15 years. Between 1986 to 1989 Hervé played with singer Dee Dee Bridgewater in many concerts and tours, and recorded with her the album Live in Paris.
In 1990 Sellin obtained the Django Reinhardt award from The French Jazz Academy for his activities as pianist, composer and arranger. In 1991 he met Branford Marsalis and recorded with him (Columbia/Sony Hervé Sellin Sextet featuring Branford Marsalis). From 1995 to 2000 Hervé toured with French drummer/composer Bertrand Renaudin playing on concerts and tours and recording three albums with him.
In 2001 Sellin recorded, live at the Bayonne Jazz Festival, a solo piano album, Thèmes et Variations. On occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Jazz in Marciac Festival in 2002, he performed a suite for ten musicians composed and arranged by himself. In 2003 Hervé played, with French accordionist Richard Galliano and a string quintet, on Piazzolla For Ever, an outake of the tango music of Astor Piazzolla, doing concerts, tours, a CD (2003 -Dreyfus Jazz) and a DVD (2006)
In October 2003 Hervé was invited by Wynton Marsalis to play two concerts at The Lincoln Center of New-York with his tentet.
In 2008 he released the album Marciac-New-York Express, by The Hervé Sellin Tentet (Crystal records/Harmonia Mundi), and got the award for Best French Jazz Album of the Year given by The French Jazz Academy.
Hervé works also full-time as a teacher at the Jazz and Improvised Music department of the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris.
Georgian theatre and opera director, arts manager and composer, David Sakvarelidze is internationally recognised for his innovative productions and for transforming the cultural life of Georgia.
After graduating from the Tbilisi Theatrical University, Sakvarelidze studied with Giorgio Strehler and Luca Ronconi in Milan; Peter Brook at the Royal National Theatre Studio in London; at the Tisch School of the Arts in New York and with Jennifer Tipton at Yale University.
Emerging on the international opera and theatre scene after Georgia’s independence, Sakvarelidze became the predominant figure in Georgian theatre during this period. Quickly establishing a reputation for championing contemporary writing, he founded the Caucasian Theatre/Lab to develop new writers. Sakvarelidze is credited with the emergence of a distinctive new creative language in Georgian theatre that became identified with the generation emerging in the newly independent Georgia.
One of Georgia’s most influential newspapers, Tbilisi, wrote of Sakvarelidze at this time “Dear readers, the future of Georgian theatre has been found.” This attention led to further invitations to direct across Georgia resulting in such acclaimed productions as Goldoni’s Marriage by Contest for Georgian Youth Theatre; Hanoch Levin’s Mouth Open for the Rustaveli State Theatre which won two Union of Theatre Worker’s Awards for Best Director and Best Performance of the year and Lysistrata which won three of Georgia’s most important theatrical awards the Duruji’s.
Opera has always been central to Sakvarelidze’s career and he was the first person to bring early music to Georgia with his Euridice by Peri and Rinuccini. Productions of Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana and numerous productions for the Georgian State Conservatoire followed.
During this period Sakvarelidze always composed, primarily for theatre productions, and through the popularity of these compositions he became a popular figure across Georgia.
His work in Georgia attracted international attention with the Times of London anointing him “At 28…already the godfather of an emerging generation of artists.” Such attention led to invitations to work at English National Opera in London; at the New York Theatre Workshop, where he directed Pinkowski’s Mint Juleps as part of his residency, and at Milan’s Piccolo Teatro Di Milano.
While in Milan he wrote a thesis on the future of theatre and opera in Georgia and the need to implement new working methods that would banish the old Soviet style of management and training. His advocating that only by adopting such contemporary practices could culture be improved in Georgia was sent by the Italian Ambassador in Georgia to members of the Georgian government who enthusiastically endorsed his proposals and appointed him general director of Tbilisi State Opera and Ballet Theatre. Productions of great operas such as La Traviata, Rigoletto and Tosca were mixed with productions of lesser known works such as Mozart’s Mitridate Re di Ponto and Verdi’s Attila.
Big scale public productions have included directing galas for Plácido Domingo, 60th birthday concert of Georgian opera star Paata Burchuladze in the Palace of Sports for 12,000 spectators and President George H. Bush’s visit to Tbilisi’s Freedom Square.
In 2017, Sakvarelidze founded the Tsinandali Festival that instantly became one of the world’s leading music festivals. In his role as general director he was instrumental in founding the Pan Caucasian Youth Orchestra that brings young musicians from across the Caucasian region together. Such work developing the talents of young musicians and actors from challenging places is also exemplified by his work as artistic director of the Sokhumi State Drama Theatre which consists of refugees.
Sakvarelidze is president of the Georgian National Center of the UNSECO International Theatre Institute. His awards include the Georgian Presidential Order of Excellence.
Anna Lucia Richter comes from a large family of musicians. A long-time member of the girls’ choir at Cologne Cathedral, she received singing lessons from her mother Regina Dohmen from the age of nine. She was subsequently trained by Prof. Kurt Widmer in Basel and completed her singing studies with distinction with Prof. Klesie Kelly-Moog at the Cologne Academy of Music. She received further inspiration from Christoph Prégardien, Edith Wiens and Margreet Honig. In spring 2020, the artist initiated a change of subject to mezzo-soprano under the guidance of vocal expert Prof. Tamar Rachum, who still mentors her and is now her authoritative teacher. An important step that opened up new opportunities for the artist worldwide. In March, for example, she gave a guest performance of Mahler’s Wunderhorn Lieder under the direction of Ádám Fischer in Düsseldorf at short notice.