EUBO violas

Samuel Kennedy , UK

Samuel is a graduate of Cambridge University and has recently completed the Postgraduate Diploma in Performance at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester (RNCM) where he has studied viola with Ásdís Valdimarsdóttir and baroque viola with Annette Isserlis. At the RNCM, Sam has been principal viola of many of the college orchestras, performed with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra as part of a professional experience scheme and also has been invited to play with the Britten-Pears Baroque Orchestra. Whilst studying for a bachelor’s degree in Music at Cambridge, Sam was an Instrumental Award holder studying the violin with Howard Davis and Arisa Fujita and was leader of the Cambridge University Music Society First Orchestra. He has performed Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn violin concertos with the Teesside Symphony Orchestra and became a Masked Guard in Cambridge Handel Opera Group’s 2003 production of Tamerlano, studying baroque movement and gesture with Richard Gregson. As a violinist, Sam was a member of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain for two years. Sam also learnt the viola d’amore for the 2009 RNCM production of Janácek’s Katya Kabanova and has since played the obbligato viola d’amore parts for Bach’s St John Passion with Manchester Baroque and the Syred Sinfonia

Ellin Sydhagen, Sweden

Elin started playing the viola at an early age and has since then been a devoted explorer of music. She started her studies on the modern viola and then changed to baroque in 2008. In June 2010 she graduated from the University of Music and Drama in Gothenburg, under the guidance of her teacher Björn Sjögren. She also studied chamber music at the Evaristo Felice Dall’Abacco Conservatory in Verona, with Franco Pavan, Stefano Vegetti and Enrico Parizzi, and has taken lessons with Stefano Marcocchi. As a keen performer of chamber music she frequently gives concerts with her own baroque ensemble, Ensemble Arden, and with the chamber orchestra Karlsson Baroque. In 2008, Ensemble Arden became finalist in the most important competition for young baroque ensembles in Sweden, at the Stockholm Early Music Festival, and in May 2009 they were among the finalists of another important competition in Sweden. Besides her strong interest in historical performance, she is also active as a singer, mainly jazz and alternative pop.

Lucile Chionchini, France

Lucile was born in Lyon where she started to play the violin at the age of six. After her first diploma in chamber music and violin at the conservatory in Villeurbanne she moved to Paris and studied viola with Bruno Pasquier and chamber music with the string quartet Quatuor Ysaÿe. She discovered the lyric repertoire with the French opera singer Anne Marie Blanzat and began her education as a singer. Since 2005 she has lived in Germany, where she studied opera singing with Dorothea Wirtz and viola with Sylvie Altenburger at the Conservatory of Freiburg. After participating in projects with Gottfried von der Goltz, Robert Hill and Michael Behringer she discovered her love for baroque music and started to specialize in this at the Ensemble Akademie in Freiburg with the viola player Annette Schmidt. In 2010 she graduated and now works with Petra Müllejans, the leader of the Freiburger Barockorchester. She also played with this orchestra in a recording for Hamonia Mundi. Lucile works with several ensembles and orchestras all over Europe as a singer and viola player.