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Sebastian Wienand lives in Basel and performs worldwide on historic keyboard instruments as a soloist, chamber music partner, and continuo player. He has collaborated with musicians and ensembles such as the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, the Academy for Ancient Music Berlin, Les musiciens du Louvre, Millennium Orchestra, Maurice Steger, Gottfried von der Goltz, Rebeka Rusó and many others.
Prior to studying harpsichord, fortepiano and figured bass he founded the ensemble L’Ornamento. This work was rewarded by successes such as first prize and audience award for the ensemble at Musica Antiqua Bruges and the audience award at the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern festival, where the ensemble has been an almost annual guest ever since.
As musical assistant to the Belgian conductor René Jacobs, he has contributed to internationally acclaimed opera productions at venues such as the Theater an der Wien or La Monnaie in Brussels. He has been invited several times to join his most important partner, the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, for example to play Beethoven’s „Chorfantasie“ at Berlins Philharmonie to celebrate the anniversary of the fall of the wall in 2014. A further highlight was a concert moderated by Andreas Staier with an all-Haydn programme at the Schwetzinger Festspiele in 2013, where he was invited again in 2016 to lead the six Brandenburg concertos together with La Cetra Basel.
Some CDs feature him as a soloist and chamber musician, for example Cembalo concertos of the Bach family with the Brandenburg State Orchestra and Howard Griffiths as well as Bach’s fifth Brandenburg concerto with the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra.
Sebastian Wienand has been a scholarship recipient of the German Music Council, the Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben, the Credit Suisse Emerging Artists Series, the Mozart Foundation Dortmund, and the Arts Foundation Baden-Württemberg.
Bass Yannick Spanier studied at the Hannover University of Music, Drama and Media and at the Conservatoire de Toulouse. The young singer has already been cast in many important roles, including Sarastro (Die Zauberflöte), Arkel (Pelléas et Melisande) and Dr Bartolo (Il Barbiere di Siviglia). From the 2017 / 18 season, Spanier was part of the Junge Oper Hannover and, in 2019 / 20, he joined the ensemble of the Hannover Staatsoper, where he just finished a run as Don Alfonso in Così fan tutti. He is an alumnus of the Verbier Festival Academy’s Atelier Lyrique (2018).
French soprano Mariamielle Lamagat is a recent graduate of the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris. She began her musical journey studying classical piano, percussion and jazz piano. She went on to the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles, where she studied French early music. In 2018, she received Third Prize at the Cesti Competition and was awarded several prizes at the Concours International de la Mélodie de Gordes with her duo partner Virgile Van Essche. In 2019, she sang the role of Teofane in Haendel’s Ottone for the Innsbrücker Festwochen der Alten Musik and Clarisse in Haydn’s Il mondo della luna. Lamagat’s passion for ensemble music led her to co-found the vocal quartet L’Archipel and the baroque Ensemble Théodora.
Canadian mezzo-soprano Jillian Tam has just finished her second year as an undergraduate student in vocal performance at McGill University in Montreal under the direction of Dominique Labelle. She is a member of the McGill University Schulich Singers Ensemble conducted by Jean-Sebastian Vallée. Tam was a student at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute in 2018 and this summer, is the youngest singer accepted to the Verbier Festival Academy’s Atelier Lyrique.
Alejandro Viana began his cello studies at age seven. He studied with María de Macedo and with Lluis Claret in Barcelona. He is currently studying at the Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofía (Madrid) with Ivan Monighetti. Alejandro took part in the Verbier Festival Academy in 2021 and, in 2018/19 was a member of Gautier Capuçon’s classe d’excellence de violoncelle. He received first prizes at several competitions, including the Manhattan International Music Competition, the Llanes International Cello Competition (Spain) and the Karl Davidov International Competition (Latvia). He has participated in festivals including IMS Prussia Cove, the Rutesheim Festival and the Santander Festival. As a soloist, Alejandro has performed with the Chamber Orchestra Andrés Segovia, The Zagreb Soloists and the Freixenet Symphonic Orchestra, among others. He recently made his Carnegie Hall debut.
After studying with Jérôme Pernoo at the Conservatoire national Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris and then in Gautier Capuçon’s Classe d’Excellence de Violoncelle at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Caroline Sypniewski perfected her skills with Clemens Hagen at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. She was named Classical Revelation by Adami (2017) and Young Talent of the Music and Wine Festival in Clos-Vougeot (2019) and was awarded the Ginette Neveu Prize at the Carl Flesch Academy (2015) and Grand Prix of the Académie Ravel (2018). Caroline is supported by the Safran Foundation.
Ivan Skanavi was born into a family of musicians in Moscow. At six he started the cello and entered music school, where his teachers were Olga Galochkina and Tamara Alekseeva. Later, he studied with Alexey Seleznev at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory. He is now a student of Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt at the Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt in Weimar. Ivan is a prizewinner of several international competitions and a Semifinalist of the Tchaikovsky International Competition (2019). Ivan plays a cello made by the Italian maker David Tecchler from 1698.
Thomas Prechal is a student at the Academie Muzikaal Talent (Utrecht) where he receives lessons from Jan-Ype Nota and Michel Strauss. He is a multiple prize winner: winner of the Bohuš Heran International Cello Competition in the Czech Republic (2017), First and Second Prize winner at the Princess Christina Composition Competition (2017 and 2020), First Prize winner of the Concours de Violoncelle ‘Edmont Baert’ in Brussels and Third Prize and Special Prize winner winner at International Cello Competition ‘David Popper’ in Hungary. In addition to playing the cello, Thomas likes to compose and regularly receives commissions.
Roger Morelló Ros performs regularly in well-known concert halls such as Philarmonie Berlin, Beethoven Hall of the Redoute Bonn, Kerkrade Theater, Pau Casals Auditorium, Josep Carreras Auditorium, Palau de la Música Catalana and La Pedrera/Casa Milà, where he was an Artist in Residence in 2018/19. He first studied in Spain with Carolina Pineda (Salou), David Blay (Vila-seca), Damian Martínez (Musikene) and then moved to Germany to pursue a Master and a Soloist Diploma with Maria Kliegel at the University of Music in Cologne, finishing with honors and with the financial support of the Deutschslandstipendium and the Güell Scholarship. He is now pursuing a Master of Chamber Music with Anthony Spiri and Harald Schoneweg.
Irena Josifoska performs as soloist and chamber musician across Europe and the United States. She has received more than 40 awards and recognitions, among them, First Prize winner of Berlin’s Gabrielli Cello Competition in 2021, the same year that she was named co-recipient of the Prix Jean Nicolas Firmenich, recognising the Verbier Festival Academy’s most promising cellist. She was also winner of the Silver Medal at the Vienna International Music Competition (2018) and a Gold Medal at the Manhattan International Music Competition (2019), and was the youngest Semifinalist at the Queen Elisabeth Competition in 2017. Irena began playing the cello at age five with her mother, finished Bachelor studies in Detmold in the class of Xenia Jankovic, and now, pursues her Masters at the Universität der Künste Berlin, in the class of Jens Peter Maintz.