Frederic Jost

18. December 2019/in /by Jane Pagel

Frederic Jost, a member of Berlin’s Staatsoper Unter den Linden International Opera Studio since the 2019/2020 season, is presenting himself in operas by Mozart up to Mussorgsky. In 2019, the bass returned to Oper Frankfurt, where he made his company debut in 2018 singing Ordulfo in Frankfurt’s first staging of Trojahn‘s Enrico, to sing First Handwerksbursche in Christof Loy’s acclaimed production of Berg’s Wozzeck.

Frederic Jost, born in Munich in 1993, gained his first artistic experiences with Tölzer Knabenchor. As soloist of Tölzer Knabenchor, he sung under the baton of conductors including Claudio Abbade, Ivor Bolton, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Mariss Jansons, Kent Nagano and Sir Simon Rattle. In 2003, he made his debut at Staatsoper Unter den Linden Berlin singing Yniold in Debussy‘s Pelleas et Mellisande, in 2004 he performed Bernstein‘s Chichester Psalms at Concertgebouw Amsterdam and Herkulessaal der Münchner Residenz. Besides, he was soloist in Bach‘s b minor Mass at Thomaskirche Leipzig and in a CD recording of di Lasso’s Bußpsalmen. He performed Knabe in Mozart‘s Die Zauberflöte at the main opera companies in Europe and the United States of America, Hirte in Wagner’s Tannhäuser and Puccini’s Tosca at Bayerischen Staatsoper.

After studying musicology, Frederic Jost started vocal studies with Michelle Breedt at Musikhochschule für Musik und Theater in Munich from 2014 to 2019. Master classes with Brigitte Fassbaender and Michelle Breedt refined his education. Frederic Jost is holding a scholarship of the Foundation Yehudi Menuhin Live Music Now München e.V. and the Richard Wagner Society and the 2020 Lied-Academy of the International Musikfestival Heidelberger Frühling at Berlin.

Since 2014, the young bass is a regular in new productions at Bayerische Staatsoper: Assan in Menotti’s The Consul (2017, accompanied by Münchener Kammerorchester); Coryphée in a Gluck’s Alceste (2019); `Achills tiefer Schatten´ in Hauke Berheide’s world premiere Mauerschau (2016); main bass part in Magal’s Jephta’s Daughter (2015); Zweiter Hauptmann in Zimmermann‘s Die Soldaten under the baton of Kirill Petrenko (2014). In February 2020, he will go on a tour of Hong Kong, singing Truffaldin in Strauss‘ Ariadne auf Naxos.

In 2016, he made his debut at Davos Festival, singing the main part Richard Boll in Joseph Weigl’s Die Schweizer Familie, and in 2018 at the Bregenz Festival.

Frederic Jost performed his first lied recital, accompanied by Donald Sulzen, at the festival Fränkische Musiktage in Alzenau in 2015. In 2014, he sang Pilatus in Bach‘s St. John’s Passion under the baton of Hans-Jörg Albrecht. Since, he performed Jesus in Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion, Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, Beethoven‘s Symphony N° 9, Handel’s The Messiah, Haydn’s Salve Regina, Mozart’s Requiem and Vesperae solemnis, Schumann’s Faust-Szenen.

Frederic Jost worked with producers including Brigitte Fassbaender and Andreas Kriegenburg and performed under the baton of conductors including Hans-Jörg Albrecht, Marcus Bosch, Oksana Lyniv, Kirill Petrenko.

Geng Lee

5. December 2019/in Bass /by Jane Pagel

Geng Lee, a young Lyric – Baritone from China, is currently studying at Conservatory for Music and Theater in Hamburg (HfMT Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg). His earliest contact with music was in the choir of his primary school. At the age of 16 he began to study in the class of Prof. Yuemei Li where he received an early professional training in Bel Canto. At the age of 19 he was admitted to the HfMT Hamburg with the first place and started to study with Prof. Jörn Dopfer. In his 5. semester he continued to study with Met-Soprano Prof. Carolyn Grace James. To growing up and developed a love for singing.

During his studies he participated as a solist in the “Christmas Oratorio”, and in the operas “Die lustige Witwe”, “Die Zauberflöte”, “Eugen Onegin”, ” Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor”. He raised the highest expectations of the vast majority of his audience and the music critics. He won the “Wolfgang-Amadeus-Mozart-Preis für Gesang” which as a history of the competition of the only young singer in Bachelor 1st semester, and the best young singer of 25th “FLAME” competition in Paris. The most recent award was the first prize in the Mahler Art Song Competition (Gustav Mahler Duo Liedwettbewerb) together with pianist Daan Boertien, and the award of the Gustav-Mahler-Association for the best Mahler song (Sonderpreis der Gustav-Mahler-Vereinigung Hamburg für das beste

Mahler-Lied). After the Yehudi Menuhin Live Now Music Benefit Concert baritone singer Christian Gerhaher described Geng’s singing ” As a classical singer, who will have a good career in the future.”

In 2015 Geng received an invitation from conductor Manfred Fabricius to participate in a charity event for refugee children given by the German Paediatricians for which he recorded the “Messe” from Franz Schubert.

Fanny Soyer

27. November 2019/in /by Jane Pagel

Die Sopranistin Fanny Soyer, geboren 1994 in Paris, begann im Alter von vier Jahren Klavier zu spielen. 2009 nahm sie erstmals Gesangsstunden bei Patrick Marco im Rahmen der Kinder- und Jugendförderung „Maitrise de Paris“ am Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional (CRR) de Paris, wo sie anschließend bei Melanie Jackson im Département Supérieur pour Jeune Chanteurs de Paris Gesang studierte.

Seit September 2016 studiert sie in der Klasse von Prof. Christine Schäfer an der Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler und arbeitet dort u.a. mit Julia Varady, Wolfram Rieger, Eric Schneider, Thomas Quasthoff zusammen. Im Juni 2018 übernahm sie in der Hochschulproduktion „Dido und Aeneas” von Henry Purcell die Partie der Dido. 2019 schloss sie ihr Bachelorstudium erfolgreich ab. Das erste Semester ihres Masterstudiums verbringt sie an der e Royal Danish Academy of Music in Kopenhagen in der Klasse von Helene Gjerris.

Jongsoo Yang

20. November 2019/in /by Jane Pagel

Jongsoo Yang, a young bass, studied from 2016 to 2019 Konzertexamen with Prof. Reginaldo Pinheiro and at the same time sang as a member of the Freiburg Opera Studio. From 2017 to 2019 he was a member of the ensemble at the Theater Freiburg and sang the roles of Masetto in “Don Giovanni” and Colline in “La Bohème” among others. Jongsoo completed his bachelor and LOK (Lied Oratorio Konzert) master studies with Prof. Peter Maus at the University of the Arts Berlin (UdK, 2011-2016). While studying at UdK he made his opera debut singing Pantalon from “Commedia dell’arte” and Simone from “La finta semplice” by Mozart. Moreover, he worked intensively with Prof. Peter Maus on concert repertoire singing various cantatas and oratorios in numerous churches in Berlin such as Haydn’s Creation with Junge Ensemble under the direction of Frank Markowitsch as part of a communication project of IASS Potsdam on nature and culture. He performed the Concert for the Nations in 2015 broadcast live on the internet. Additionally, he had extensive Lied lessons in Berlin: German songs with Prof. Eric Schneider and Liana Vlad, Russian songs with Prof. Sayali Dadas and contemporary Lied repertoire with Prof. Axel Bauni. He was a semifinalist at the International Music Competition in Montreal and during his studies he was a scholarship holder of the Oscar und Vera Ritter Stiftung and Paul Hindemith Gesellschaft.

Kunal Lahiry

18. November 2019/in /by Jane Pagel

The young American Kunal Lahiry is becoming one of the most promising and sought after pianists of his generation. Following his orchestral debut at the age of 17 with the Gainesville Symphony Orchestra as the first prize winner of the Kiwanis Society scholarship, Lahiry has won top prizes at international competitions including the Atlanta Music Club, New Orleans Piano Institute, Brevard Music Center Piano Competition, Concours “Les Saisons de la Voix”, Toulouse International French Song Competition, and the XXVI Concours de Flame in Paris. He is a Britten-Pears Young Artist, Yehudi Menuhin Live Music Now Artist, Center for Musical Excellence (CME) Young Artist, ENOA Artist, Leeds Lieder Young Artist, and Samling Young Artist. Recently, he was selected for Renée Fleming’s inaugural SongStudio program for collaborative pianists and singers at Carnegie Hall, was awarded the 2019 Sam Hutchings Pianist Prize at the Oxenfoord International Summer School directed by Malcolm Martineau, and has been invited to the 2020 Heidelberg Lied Akademie under the direction of Thomas Hampson, with performances at the Boulez Saal and Heidelberg Frühling Festival. He has participated in masterclasses with renowned artists such as Graham Johnson, Sir Thomas Allen, Malcolm Martineau, Murray Perahia, André Laplante, Hartmut Höll, Helmut Deutsch, Susan Manoff, Brian Zeger, and Anne le Bozec.

Kunal Lahiry’s special affinity towards art song has led to concerts at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Académie Musicale de Villecroze, Carnegie Hall Weill Music Room, Wigmore Hall, La Monnaie, Sage Gateshead, Britten Studio, Auditorium Saint-Pierre-Des-Cuisine, Teatr Wielki, Salon Razumovsky, l’Église Américaine de Paris, Musée des Archives Nationales, Musée d’Orsay, Royaumont Abbey, Opéra de Rouen, Petit Palais, Leipziger Oper, Mendelssohn Remise, and in the Lunchkonzert series of the Berliner Philharmonie. He was featured in Clemens Goldberg’s lecture-performance series ‘Slow Listening’, on the radio program ‘Kulturradio RBB’ in Berlin, on the live radio broadcast “Génération France Musique”, and has appeared several times in concert for the Daniel Barenboim Excellence Foundation. In 2018, Lahiry was selected for the first academy of melody and lieder at the Royaumont Abbey and Musée D’Orsay, a year-long residency culminating in a live album recording with B Records. His former teachers include Walter Hautzig, Alan Chow, Kyoko Hashimoto, and Fabio Bidini. Lahiry recently finished his Master’s in song interpretation under the tutelege of Wolfram Rieger at the Hochschule für Musik “Hanns Eisler” in Berlin

Lars Conrad

18. November 2019/in /by Jane Pagel

Lars Conrad was born in 1996 in Hamm, Germany. He began his vocal training with Tjark Baumann at the local music school. When he was still in school, he began studying voice at the HfM Detmold with Markus Köhler and Lied with Manuel Lange. After his graduation in 2014, he switched to the HMT Leipzig to study his Bachelor with Berthold Schmid, which he concluded with great success in summer 2018. He also studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama with Rudolf Piernay.

He attended Masterclasses with Roman Trekel, Christine Schäfer, Edith Wiens and Peter Schreier. He also worked privately with Michael Volle. Operatic Roles include Willi Graf in Davies “Kommilitonen”, Nepomuk in “La Grande Duchesse de Gerolstein” by Offenbach, Journalist in „Lulu“ and Cesare in Händels „Giulio Cesare in Egitto“. He performed in the HMT Leipzig as well as in theatres Görlitz, Nordhausen, Dessau and Leipzig. He is a memeber of the festivals “Winter in Schwetzingen” opera studio, where he will perform under the direction of Christina Pluhar in “Die getreue Alceste” by Schürmann. He worked with directors Lotte de Beer, Matthias Oldag and Steffen Piontek. Conductors include Matthias Foremny, Ulrich Kern, Ulf Schirmer and Peter Schreier.

He worked intensively on his Lieder repertoire with Manuel Lange, Alexander Schmalcz, Ian Burnside and Eric Schneider, with whom he did several recitals. He was a member of the Schubert-Institut Baden bei Wien 2019 and will participate in the Lied Academy Heidelberger Frühling in 2020. Lars performed in the Thomaskirche Leipzig, the Gewandhaus zu Leipzig and in festivals such as the Bachfest Leipzig and the Schumannfestwoche. Additionally he gives concerts all over Germany. His oratorio repertoire reaches from Baroque to late Romantic music.

He was awarded 3rd Prize at the Helmut-Deutsch-Liedwettbewerb Vienna.

Sofia Vinnik

15. November 2019/in Mezzosporan /by Jane Pagel

Sofia Vinnik, mezzo-soprano, born 1996 in Munich, started her studies as a junior student at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Munich with her teacher Marilyn Schmiege. Since 2016 she is studying at the University Mozarteum in Salzburg with Christoph Strehl and in the Lied class of Pauliina Tukiainen. She sang in the Bad Reichenhall Theater with the Bad Reichenhaller Philharmonie and in the Philharmonie Gasteig with the Salzburg Orchestra Soloists. In addition to opera, the young singer also has a great passion for Kunstlied. She performed songs of G. Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn as part of the Concert Series of the Gesellschaft für Musiktheater Wien, since 2017 she is giving recitals at the Mittwoch Klassik in Ingolstadt. In 2019 Sofia Vinnik performed songs by I. Aboulker, P. Viardot and C. Schumann at the Bonner Schumannfest. She is one of the finalists of the Louis Spohr Singing Competition in Kassel 2018 and the International Singing Competition for Baroque Opera Pietro Antonio Cesti in Innsbruck 2018. In November 2018 she won the LOTTO Foundation’s Sponsorship Prize in the German Singing Competition of Bundeswettbewerb Gesang 2018 in Berlin. Sofia Vinnik is a scholarship holder of the Bad Reichenhall Vocal Academy and works in conjunction with the Gstaad Vocal Academy and the Cecilia Bartoli Music Foundation with Silvana Bazzoni-Bartoli. Since July 2018 she is a scholarship holder of Yehudi Munuhin’s Live Music Now Foundation in Salzburg.

Liviu Holender

The Austrian Baritone Liviu Holender joins the Ensemble at Oper Frankfurt from the beginning of the 2019/2020 season, during which he can be heard as Leone in Tamerlano,Moralès/Dancaïro in Carmen, Masetto in Don Giovanni and Marullo in Rigoletto. Furthermore he will debut as Silvano (Un ballo in maschera) under Zubin Mehta at Teatro alla Scala di Milano. Since the 2017/2018 season he has been a member of the ensemble of the Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz in Munich, where he has appeared as Count Eberbach in Lortzing’s Der Wildschütz, Papageno (Die Zauberflöte), Guglielmo (Così fan tutte), Schaunard (La bohème) and Hans Scholl in Udo Zimmermann’s Die weiße Rose. He also appeared as Marullo at the Bregenz Festival 2019, as Silvio (Pagliacci) and Count Almaviva (Le nozze di Figaro) at the National Opera Bucharest. As a participant in the Young Singers Project, Liviu Holender sang Papageno in Die Zauberflöte für Kinder (The magic flute for children) at the Salzburg Festival 2018. In the 2018/2019 season he sang Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra under Frederic Chaslin. With pianist Matthias Fletzberger Liviu Holender appeared in recitals at the Niederösterreichische Serenade Concerts, Philharmonic of Sofia. Liviu Holender studied piano at the Vienna Conservatory and clarinet at the University of Music. Since 2013 he has had singing lessons with Karlheinz Hanser at the Vienna Music University.

Ketevan Chuntishvili

14. November 2019/in Soprano, Soprano /by Jane Pagel

Georgian soprano Ketevan Chuntishvili was born in 1996 in Tbilisi. She studies with Prof. Dr. Marek Rzepka at the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover. She completed her Bachelors degree there in 2019, and at the same time received a place to study for a Masters in Opera.

Ketevan is grateful to be supported by various scholarships, including the ‘Musik braucht Freunde’ and ‘Deutschlandstipendium’. In addition, she has been a scholarship holder at Yehudi Menuhin’s Live Music Now Hannover since 2018.

Ketevan’s musical influences include masterclasses with numerous distinguished singers, such as Peter Berne, Roman Trekel, Ana Sokolovic, Claudia Barainsky and Stefan Vinke. She also greatly enjoys studying Lied under Justus Zeyen.

As a soloist, Ketevan has sung Lisa (Fanchette) in Jacques Offenbach’s Pariser Leben, Lena in Ana Sokolovic’s Svadba and Echo in Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos for the HMTM-Hannover. In February 2019 she sang the role of Maiden at the Hamburger Sprechwerk, in a shortened version of the opera Der Kaiser von Atlantis by Viktor Ullmann directed by Karina Häßlein. This year she made her debut at ‘Oper auf dem Lande’ as Gretel in Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel.

Kateryna Garanich

Kateryna Garanich, born in Ukraine, is a concert pianist. She began her piano studies at age 4 under the guidance of her grandmother Kira Garanich at the Special Secondary Music School in Kharkiv, Ukraine. At the age of 6, Kateryna was already invited to perform with the Kiev National Philharmonic.

Kateryna has won several prizes and special awards at renowned international competitions, including 2nd Prize at the “Virtuosi per Musica di Pianoforte” Competition in the Czech Republic, 3rd Prize at the 9th International Volodymyr Krainev Competition for Young Pianists, 4th Prize at the 8th International Competition for Young Pianists in Memory of Vladimir Horowitz, 2nd Prize at the International Competition for Young Pianists in S. Prokofiev’s Native Land, etc. Kateryna was invited to record the Mozart Piano Concerto with the Kiev National Philharmonic for the “Mezzo” Network. She was then awarded a scholarship by the President of Ukraine.

In 2014 Kateryna began her studies with Gerlinde Otto at the Hochschule für Musik “Franz Liszt” in Weimar, Germany, sponsored by the “Neue Liszt Stiftung Weimar”. Since 2016 she has studied at the Hochschule für Musik “Hanns Eisler” in Berlin with Eldar Nebolsin. Starting in 2019 she has focusing her studies in vocal collaboration under the tutelage of Professor Wolfram Rieger, specializing in song accompaniment.

Kateryna also frequently appears as soloist, chamber musician, and Lied pianist in recitals and concerts throughout Europe and Asia.

Künstler