EUBO violins

Erin Chen studied music at the University of Western Australia with Paul Wright, one of Australia’s leading violinists and baroque exponents. During this time she was finalist in the Vose Memorial Prize, awarded the Jean Rogerson Studentship, winner of the Fremantle Open Concerto Competition and winner of the Waveney Wansborough Prize, and was also awarded the Lady Callaway Medal for the most outstanding final-year music student at UWA. Since 2006, Erin has been focusing on early music at the Royal Conservatory in Den Haag, under the guidance of Ryo Terakado. Erin has performed, recorded and toured with various ensembles in Europe, Australia and Asia including Australian Classical Era Orchestra, Ensemble Arcangelo, Collegium Musicum, The Tall Poppeas, West Australian Symphony Orchestra, Young Australian Concert Artists String Quartet, Opera Studio Nederland, Contrasto Armonico, Il Concerto Barocco, Ensemble Bastarda and recently completed a successful audition for English Concert.

Anne Marie Christensen comes from the small Danish island Bornholm. She first discovered the baroque violin while studying at The Royal Danish Academy of Music where she was involved in several historically informed ensemble projects. She has a Master of Music in Historical Performance from Oberlin Conservatory, Ohio, USA where she held a full tuition merit scholarship. Over the years Anne Marie has performed widely across Europe and the US. She is now focusing on repertoire from the French baroque and Italian repertoire for ‘violino e cello’. Currently a Beatrice Taylor Scholar her studies have been supported by The Leverhulme Trust (UK), The Manderbaach Lungerhausen Foundation (US), Augustinus Fonden, Dagny Gad Andresens Fond (DK) and others. She now lives in London studying with Walter Reiter at Trinity College of Music. She will begin her DMus studies at the Royal College of Music in 2008.

Daniela Henzinger was born in Linz, Austria. At the age of seven she received her first musical training on the violin and began to study at the Brucknerkonservatorium Linz aged eleven. Later on she attended the Musikgymnasium in Linz where she continued her violin studies. During this time she gained a wider experience through extended musical activities like chamber music, singing and orchestra playing in various concerts and recordings. Since 2005 Daniela has been studying baroque violin with Michi Gaigg at the Anton-Bruckner-Privatuniversität Linz and has taken part in several courses where she was influenced by Gerhart Darmstadt and Pauline Nobes amongst others. She regularly plays concerts with various baroque ensembles and orchestras in Austria and abroad.

Ivan Iliev was born in Pernik, Bulgaria, and studied violin at the National Academy of Music in Sofia where he finished his Bachelor degree with Verka Stefanova in 2007. Currently, he is working towards his Master’s degree with Yosif Radionov. Ivan has participated in masterclasses with, among others, members of the Amadeus, Smetana and Bartok quartets. He was a prize-winner at the Young Music Talents National Competition, Sofia in 2002, and in 2007 at the National Academy of Music for performance of chamber music by contemporary Bulgarian composers. He is a member of the early music consort Concerto Antico, and with them performed at the Festival de Musica Antiga in Barcelona in 2007 and 2008. Ivan is a co-founder and member of Ars Barocca, which was named Ensemble of the Year 2007 by Bulgarian National Radio. Ars Barocca and Concerto Antico performed at the first Sofia Baroque Arts Festival in November 2007.

Sophie Iwamura studied baroque violin in the class of Patrick Bismuth at the Conservatoire National de Région in Paris, and subsequently with Sigiswald Kuijken at the Conservatoire Royal de Bruxelles. During her studies she took part in several masterclasses and academies, for example the Académie d’Ambronay under the direction of Gabriel Garrido, Académie de Royaumont with Gérard Lesne, Studio Vocal with Martin Gester and a course in Amilly with Patrick Bismuth. As well as performing chamber music in France, Belgium and Norway, she has played with several orchestras including Le Parlement de Musique de Strasbourg, l’Ensemble Baroque de Nice, Ensemble Mateus and les Folies Françoises.

Katharina Kiesenhofer was born in Linz, Austria, and started to play modern violin at the age of seven. First she studied at the Anton Bruckner Privatuniversität with Albert Fischer, Wolfram Wincor and Pedrag Katanic. From 2002 to 2007 she was a student of Josef Sabaini, with whom she completed her diploma on modern violin. Katharina has performed in projects with directors including Yehudi Menuhin, Lorin Maazel, Franz Welser Möst, Dennis Russell Davies and Ton Koopman. Katharina is a member of various orchestras, for example Brucknerorchester Linz, Harmonices mundi and L´Orfeo Barockorchester. During her studies she became interested in early music and started to work with Michi Gaigg.

Veronika Manova was born in the Czech Republic and began her musical studies at the Pilsen conservatory with Martin Kaplan as her modern violin teacher. She subsequently moved to Utrecht in The Netherlands to study baroque violin with Antoinette Lohmann. During her studies she has taken part in several summer courses for early music, including the Orpheon Summer Academy with tutors José Vazquez, Bert Honig, Christian Drechsel and Gerd-Uwe Klein, and the Summer School of Baroque Music with Roman Valek and Peter Zajicek. She has performed in festivals in The Netherlands and the Czech Republic with a number of orchestras including Ensemble Baroque, Collegium 1704, Orkest van de Domcantorij Utrecht and founded an ensemble Foscarina, the first western Bohemian ensemble specializing in early baroque interpretation.

Anna Nowak was born in Poland where she is now completing her modern violin studies at the Wroclaw Academy of Music. During her studies, she became interested in early music and started playing with various Polish baroque orchestras, including Arte dei Suonatori, Harmonologia, and the Wroclaw Baroque Orchestra, where she plays both violin and viola. While participating in these projects, she has had the opportunity to work with such musicians as Sirkka-Liisa Kaakinen-Pilch, Martin Gester, Alexis Kossenko, and Daniel Sepec. In 2008, she took part in the Génération Baroque project in Strasbourg under Martin Gester.

Stephen Pedder comes from Stoke-on-Trent in the United Kingdom and began playing violin at the age of six. He read music at Selwyn College, Cambridge where he pursued an active musical life as a member of the University Instrumental Awards Scheme. Upon graduating in 2005 he went to study modern violin with the late Howard Davis and baroque violin with Nicolette Moonen as an MMus performance and research student at the Royal Academy of Music, London. He has been concertmaster of several orchestras at the Academy and performed with period instrument orchestras across the UK including the Welsh Baroque Orchestra, the English Haydn Orchestra and Ex Cathedra. He has appeared at the Cambridge and Spitalfields music festivals and, most recently, at the Aldeburgh festival as a chamber musician of the Britten-Pears Baroque Orchestra.

Sara Deborah Struntz-Timossi obtained her Masters degree and Diploma at the Royal College of Music in London in 2007 under Natasha Boyarsky and Adrian Butterfield, and was coached in masterclasses by Rachel Podger, Catherine Mackintosh, Robert Levin and Sir Roger Norrington among others. She is currently the RCM’s Phoebe Benham Junior Fellow and an Assistant Teacher for Violin at the Yehudi Menuhin School. As a soloist she has performed at the Wiener Konzerthaus and London Handel Festival and won a Philip & Dorothy Green Award for Young Concert Artists in 2008. Sara Deborah performs recitals throughout Europe, and appearances with her period string quartet Chiaroscuro and her baroque group Ensemble Amaranthos have included the York Early Music Festival and Wigmore Hall. She regularly works with the UK’s leading baroque ensembles including the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the Sixteen, Florilegium, La Serenissima and Dunedin Consort.

Zefira Valova was born in Sofia where she studied violin from an early age. In 2006 she obtained both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees at the National Music Academy in Sofia, having studied with Yosif Radionov and Stoyka Milanova. She has participated in numerous violin masterclasses and summer courses including courses in Blankenburg and Obertsdorf in Germany with Reimar Orlowsky, Raphael Alpermann, Michael Niesemann and Peter Buck; in Austria with members of Bartok, Keller, Artis and Prazak Quartets; and at the International Masterclass Apeldoorn, The Netherlands. With Concerto Antico she performed at the Festival de Musica Antiga Barcelona, Spain in 2007 and 2008. In 2007 she was concertmaster with The National Youth Orchestra of The Netherlands. She has appeared as soloist with the Academic Symphony Orchestra Sofia, Classic FM Radio Symphony Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra Orpheus, Ars Barocca Ensemble. Since 2003 she has been concertmaster of Classic FM Radio Orchestra.