Chouchane Siranossian
The French violinist Chouchane Siranossian is one of the most engaging talents of her generation and has firmly established her reputation in historical performance as well as in modern music. Her deep knowledge of historical performance practices along with her exceptional virtuosity opens a new dimension for the interpretation of her vast repertoire.

Born in 1984 in Lyon to a musical family, she began her musical studies in Romans’ Conservatoire de Musique (France) where she obtained the Prix d’Excellence. Simultaneously, she was taught by the great Master Tibor Varga in Sion until 1999. The following year she was admitted in the Conservatoire National Supérieur of Lyon in the class of Pavel Vernikov. Shortly after, she started to study with Zakhar Bron at the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste. There she graduated with a soloist diploma in 2007 with the highest distinctions.

Following her studies, she won the audition for solo-violin and concert master of the Symphonic Orchestra of Sankt Gallen (Switzerland). When she met Reinhard Goebel in 2009 she spontaneously decided to study the baroque violin and historical performance practice. She worked intensively with him at the Mozarteum in Salzburg and ever since has been a regular collaborator as both soloist and concert master. Strong with her encompassing knowledge of the sources combined with her virtuosic interpretation on historical instrument she delivers thrilling performances that are acclaimed by the public and the press.

As both soloist and concert master, she has played with numerous orchestras, including Staatskapelle Dresden, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Concerto Köln, Les Musiciens du Louvre, Hofkapelle München, Münchener Kammerorchester, Collegium 1704, and Anima Eterna. She is founder of the ensemble Les Racines du Temps and leader of Ensemble Esperanza Liechtenstein.

She has played with Bertrand Chamayou, Philippe Bianconi, Michel Béroff, Daniel Ottensamer, Benjamin Engeli, and Thomas Demenga, as well as historical performance specialists such as Jos van Immerseel, Philippe Herreweghe, René Jacobs, Reinhard Goebel, Andrea Marcon, Marc Minkowski, Václav Luks, Christoph Prégardien, Andreas Spering, Dorothee Oberlinger, Alexis Kossenko, Philippe Jaroussky, Christophe Coin, Rudolf Lutz, Valer Barna-Sabadus, Rüdiger Lotter, Giuliano Carmignola, Roy Goodman, Michael Hofstetter, and Thomas Hengelbrock. Her great interest in contemporary music is reflected by her co-operation with various composers such as Bechara El Khoury, Daniel Schnyder, Marc-André Dalbavie, and Eric Tanguy.

She is regularly invited to the major concert halls such as Salle Gaveau and La Philharmonie de Paris, Concertgebouw Brugge, Tonhalle Zürich, Kölner Philharmonie, Gewandhaus Leipzig, Semperoper Dresden, Herkulessaal, Kaisersaal, and Prinzregententheater in Munich.

Her recordings as soloist as well as chamber musician have been numerously rewarded. Thus, her first solo-CD Time Reflexion received the Diapason Découverte; L‘Ange et le Diable, a duo-CD with conductor and harpsichordist Jos van Immerseel is rewarded with the International Classical Music Award in the category Baroque Instrumental.

Chouchane plays a baroque violin by Giuseppe and Antonio Gagliano (as a loan by the Greifenberger Institut) and a Niccolò Amati provided by the Boubo-Music foundation.

Thomas Demenga
born in Berne, Switzerland, studied with Walter Grimmer, Antonio Janigro, Leonard Rose and Mstislav Rostropovich, among others. Important chamber-musical influences were Claus Adam, Felix Galimir and Robert Mann at the Juilliard School in New York.

As an internationally renowned soloist, composer and teacher, Thomas Demenga counts among the most outstanding cellists and musicians of our time. He has performed at important festivals and musical centres around the globe and shared the stage with fellow musicians such as Heinz Holliger, Gidon Kremer, Thomas Larcher, Paul Meyer, Aurèle Nicolet, Hansheinz Schneeberger, Thomas Zehetmair and Tabea Zimmermann. He works with conductors such as Moshe Atzmon, Myung-Whun Chung, Charles Dutoit, Claus Peter Flor, Howard Griffiths, Heinz Holliger, Armon Jordan, Okko Kamu, Mstislav Rostropovich, Dennis Russell Davies, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Sándor Végh, Mario Venzago, and Hiroshi Wakasugi. As a soloist he has collaborated with, among others, the following orchestras: Berliner Sinfonie-Orchester, Berner Symphonie Orchester, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Camerata Bern, Junge Deutsche Philharmonie, Kammerorchester Basel, L’Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, L’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Nieuw Ensemble Amsterdam, ORF-Symphonieorchester Wien, Sinfonieorchester Basel, Sinfonietta Basel, Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, Westdeutsches Rundfunk Symphonie-Orchester, and Zürcher Kammerorchester.

Thomas Demenga’s artistic work is determined by intensive confron-tation with different historical eras and styles of interpretation and composition. He dedicates himself with particular intensity to New Music and is also active as an improviser. Thus his individual voice as a composer and interpreter of 20th and 21st century works (among them important prèmieres) gives a new and complementary dimension to both the historical performance practice of baroque music and his virtuoso interpretations of the classical and romantic repertoire. In 1991 he was the first Swiss composer to be awarded first prize for his composition «solo per due» by the congress of the «Tribune Internationale des Compositeurs».

Since 1980 Thomas Demenga has led a class for students and soloists at the Hochschule für Musik in Basel.

In August 2000 he was composer-in-residence at the Davos Festival, «Young Artists in Concert», and was subsequently appointed artistic director of the festival. In 2006 he gave up this position in order to commit himself fully to performing and composing again.

In the Lucerne Festival in summer 2003, Thomas Demenga participated as «artiste étoile», succeeding Sabine Meyer (2000), Anne-Sophie Mutter (2001) and Alfred Brendel (2002), Thomas Quasthoff (2004), Christian Tetzlaff (2005) and Emanuel Pahud (2006).

Thomas Demenga’s work is documented impressively on a number of CD recordings on the ECM New Series label. In 2002 ECM issued the final volume of a widely-acclaimed series begun in the mid-80s whicgh combined Bach’s solo suites with works by modern composers such as Holliger, Carter, Veress, Zimmermann, Yun and Hosokawa. His latest CD “Chongur” with Thomas Larcher and accordianist Teodoro Anzellotti has been awarded with the “Deutsche Schallplattenpreis”, “Fono Forum: Star of the Months”, “Grammaphone: Editors Choice” and “Le monde de la musique: le choc du mois” (ECM 1914).

Last season he played the six Bach solo suites combined with modern solo works in three succesful concerts in London’s Wigmore Hall.

Jan Schultsz
Equally active as a conductor, chamber player, song accompanist and festival director, Jan Schultsz has pursued diverse musical disciplines since the beginning of his career. He studied the piano and horn at the conservatory of his native Amsterdam and at the music academies of Basle and Lausanne. He initially played horn in various orchestras and appeared as a solo and chamber pianist and accompanying singers. At the beginning of the 1990s he had further training as a conductor from Manfred Honeck and Ralf Weikert. Since then he has divided his time between conducting, performing as a pianist and teaching.

From 1999 to 2009 Schultsz directed the Neuchâtel Chamber Orchestra, with which he recorded a series of world-premiere CD recordings of works by Swiss composers (Eric Gaudibert, Jost Meier and Peter Mieg). He has conducted a host of ensembles in Switzerland, Holland, Austria, Hungary and the Czech Republic, among them Zurich’s Tonhalle and Chamber orchestras, the Winterthur Music Collegium, the Basle Symphony and Chamber orchestras, the Lausanne and Geneva Chamber orchestras, as well as the Hungarian Symphony, Prague National Theatre and Pilsen Philharmonic orchestras. Further guest conducting engagements have taken him to Palermo, Beijing and Chile.

As an opera conductor, Jan Schultsz has been engaged by the Norwegian Opera in Oslo, the Hungarian State Opera in Budapest and the Opéra Royal de Wallonie in Liège. In 2000 he founded Opera St. Moritz in the Swiss valley of Engadin, serving as its artistic director until 2012. His repertoire embraces a wide range of Mozart operas as well as rarities by Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini and Verdi, including Swiss premieres at St. Moritz of Rossini’s Otello and L’equivoco stravagante, Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia and Verdi’s Oberto. L’equivoco stravagante, a co-production of Opéra Royal de Wallonie and Opera St. Moritz, was awarded the Paris Syndicat de la Critique’s 2012 “Prix de l’Europe francophone” as Best Opera Production (director: Stefano Mazzonis di Pralafera). In 2014 Schultsz will conduct the modern world premiere of Rossini’s complete La Gazzetta at Liège’s Royal Opera.

Jan Schultsz’s musical partners include Cecilia Bartoli, Vesselina Kasarova, Steven Isserlis, the Leipzig String Quartet, Werner Güra, László Polgár, Gilles Apap, the Capuçon brothers, Khatia Buniatishvili, Daniel Behle, Albrecht Mayer and recently with musicians from Teatro alla Scala Milano. His extensive discography contains recitals and portraits with Werner Güra (in 2000 their recording of Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin was awarded the “Diapason d’Or”), Elena Mosuc and Noëmi Nadelmann, as well as the internationally acclaimed world-premiere recording of Joachim Raff’s complete chamber music with piano, performed by the ensemble Il Trittico (Jonathan Allen, violin; Daniel Pezzotti, cello; Jan Schultsz, piano) for the DIVOX label. A recording of the complete chamber music with piano of Hans Huber, featuring Thomas Demenga among other musicians, is in preparation.

In addition, Jan Schultsz has been director since 2008 of the Engadin Festival, one of Switzerland’s oldest. He also is the founder and president of the Samedan Brassweek and holds a professorship and is spokesperson for the piano faculty at the Musikhochschule in Basle.