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Dr Yannis Rammos is a research associate in music theory at the EPFL Digital & Cognitive Musicology Lab, and member of the piano faculty at European University Cyprus. An internationally active piano pedagogue trained in Russia, in 2022/23 he led classes at the Verbier Festival Academy, the Anton Bruckner Privatuniversität für Musik, the Estonian Academy for Music & Theater, and Conservatorium van Amsterdam, among other venues. His research is motivated by technical, interpretive, and philosophical aspects of classical musical artistry, focusing on the fissure between structure and expression, anxieties of “authenticity” and “originality,” topics in piano timbre semantics, the use and disuse of music-analytical metaphors in (historical) performance treatises, and Russian musicological discourses. In most cases it engages traditions of linearity, including but not limited to Schenker’s, from various structuralist and post-structuralist perspectives. Formerly based at the Sibelius Academy, he completed his doctoral studies in piano and music theory at the CUNY Graduate Center and New York University, graduating from the latter with a Ph.D. in classical performance. Recent publications have appeared in Music & Letters, Quodlibet, and Music Theory & Analysis. He is winner of a Fulbright fellowship in piano. At EPFL he is currently working on a formal model of hidden (‘middleground’) motivic repetition, one of the most elusive, yet startling, features of the tonal canon.
Cellist Aleksey Shadrin, who was a member of the Kronberg Academy Master Program, was born into a family of musicians in Ukraine. He won the first prize of the 4th M. Lysenko International Music Competition in 2012. In 2018, he has been awarded the 3d Prize at the Prague Spring competition.
Following his early successes in numerous competitions, including the National Ukrainian Competition for Strings in Lvov/Lemberg and the 8th National Ukrainian Competition “New Names” in Kiev, he became in 2004 a scholar of the International Foundation of violinist and conductor Vladimir Spivakov.
In 2005, Aleksey Shadrin was a finalist in the 3rd David Popper International Competition in Hungary, and in 2008, he won the 2nd prize at The International Competition in Minsk. Following his competition successes, he has performed in major concert halls of Ukraine, Russia, Germany, France, South Korea, China, Vietnam, Holland and Portugal.
Aleksey Shadrin has performed as a soloist with orchestras such as the National Philharmonic of Ukraine, the National Opéra national de Montpellier, and the Sudwestdeutsche Philharmonie Konstanz.
In 2016, he made his debut appearance at the Berliner Philharmoniker. In 2017, he appeared as a soloist with the NDR Radiophilharmonie with Andrew Manze in the Grosser Sendesaal in Hannover, and made his debut appearance at the Hamburg Chamber Music Festival.
Aleksey Shadrin received his Bachelor and Master of Musical Arts at the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien in Hanover with Prof. Leonid Gorokhov.
He is currently studying with Frans Helmerson at the Kronberg Academy.
Since September 2020, he’s an Artist in Residence at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel, studying with Gary Hoffman.
Maximilian Maisky, born in 2004, is a Belgian-Italian pianist. He started playing piano at the age of 4 with Lyl Tiempo, and for several years he was a student of Hagit Hassid-Kerbel. At the age of 13 he became one of the first students of the newly opened Musica Mundi School in Waterloo, Belgium where he continued to study with Hagit Hassid-Kerbel and took regular masterclasses with Jacques Rouvier. He performed numerous times around Belgium with the school, both chamber music and solo pieces, and he enjoyed participating regularly in the Musica Mundi Course and Festival during the summer. Maximilian regularly performs with his father, Mischa Maisky, and his older sister, Lily Maisky. In 2022 October, he made his debut in Japan, playing at the Suntory Hall with his father. In 2023, he made his debut at the Philharmonie of Berlin. As of September 2023, Maximilian is an undergraduate RCM Scholar at the Royal College of Music under Prof. Dmitri Alexeev and Prof. Vitaly Pisarenko.
Prizewinner at the XV International Tchaikovsky Competition and SONY Classical exclusive artist, Pablo Ferrández is hailed as a “new cello genius” (Le Figaro). A captivating performer, “Ferrández has the lot: technique, mettle, spirit, authority as a soloist, expressivity and charm” (El Pais).
He has turned into a cello phenomenon and one of the most in-demand instrumentalists of his generation.
His debut album under SONY Classical, “Reflections”, released in 2021, was highly acclaimed by the critics and praised with the Opus Klassik Award. In Fall 2022 Pablo Ferrández released his second album, which comprised the Brahms Double Concerto, performed with Anne-Sophie Mutter, the Czech Philharmonic under M. Honeck, as well as Clara Schumann’s Piano Trio, performed with Ms. Mutter and Lambert Orkis, also receiving rave reviews.
Dr Fiona Costa trained at the Royal College of Music. As a research fellow at the University of Roehampton, her principal research interest is the effect of music on the wellbeing and quality of life of older people. Her PhD and subsequent research projects have studied the effect of music on pain, stress, anxiety and depression. Most recently her work has focused on the use of music to aid memory and communication in people with dementia.
Nour Ayadi began her piano studies at age six in Morocco and later attended the Ecole Normale and Conservatoire de Paris, earning her Artist Diploma. She is an Artist-in-Residence at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel and studied with Nelson Goerner at the Haute Ecole de Musique de Genève. Her accolades include the Prix Cortot and a nomination at the Victoires de la Musique. Alongside her musical career, Nour earned a Master in Public Policy from Sciences Po Paris. She has performed at major international festivals and collaborated with conductors Christophe Koncz, Augustin Dumay, and Mikko Franck, as well as musicians Gautier Capuçon and the Ebène Quartet. Upcoming engagements include the Philharmonie de Paris and Victoria Hall. She also participated in the Maria João Pires Academy. Nour’s second album with Scala Music received 5 stars from Classica and 3T from Télérama.
Conductor, Bar Avni is the First Prize winner of the 2024 La Maestra competition in Paris, a Prize awarded to her by an illustrious jury chaired by Natalie Stutzmann. Avni was the clear winner and swept the board at the competition, also winning The Orchestra Prize, the ‘Arte Prize’, the ‘Echo Award’ and the ‘Prize of the French Concert Halls and Orchestras’. For the next two years, she is a scholarship holder of the La Maestra Academy. There has subsequently been great interest in her work with invitations coming immediately from a number of major international orchestras. Avni’s astute and creative programming coupled with her clear, yet elegant conducting style is making a strong impression on all who encounter her.
Bar Avni is currently Chief Conductor of the Bayer Philharmoniker, a position she has held since 2021. She is the first female conductor to hold this position in the orchestra’s 120 year history. She is strongly committed to the promotion of new, young talent and has worked closely with the team in Bayer to devise a number of exciting music education projects, a topic she feels very strongly about.
A trained classical percussionist, the Israeli conductor initially performed in her country’s leading orchestras, after which her desire to conduct took her to Tel Aviv where she studied with Yoav Talmi, later becoming the assistant conductor of the Israel Chamber Orchestra under Talmi’s direction. She continued her studies with Martin Sieghart in Graz and Ulrich Windfuhr in Hamburg. In 2017/18, Avni was assistant to General Music Director, Peter Kuhn, at the Bergischer Symphoniker and in 2021, she became the youngest prize-winner and Scholarship holder of the International Kurt Masur Institute.