Teachers

Szabolcs Illés is a Baroque violinist, musicologist and a specialist in HIPP (Historically Informed Performance Practice). He obtained degrees in the modern and Baroque violins in Budapest and Leipzig, and a Masters in Baroque violin in Brussels, studying in the class of Sigiswald Kuijken, where he was the teacher’s only Hungarian student and the only exponent in Hungary of the world-famous Baroque violin school founded by him. Since 2009 he has performed in many events as a member of his teacher’s world-famous ensemble La Petite Bande. Since 2008 he had been the concertmaster of the Czech Hof-Musici ensemble for ten years. They worked mainly on the reconstruction and premiering of Baroque operas in Cesky Krumlov with period instruments, costumes, original scenery, without conductor. He gives concerts throughout Europe as a soloist and chamber musician, as a member of the chamber ensembles dolce risonanza in Vienna, La Moresca in Germany and Recurring Company in Hungary, with whom he has made many recordings. Szabolcs Illés released the following solo CD-s, based on his own research, featuring French and Italias Baroque sonatas, some of which were there recorded for the first time: „Sonate, que me veux-tu? (2011, Hof-Musici), Corelli’s Legacy (2015, Hungaroton), „Les Forjerons” (2020 Hungaroton) with first recordings of Sonatas composed by Jean-Jacques Baptiste Anet. In 2021 he recorded the 12 Telemann Fantasias with historical playing technique.  Alongside his extensive concert activity he regularly gives courses and lectures in the countries of Europe and in New Zealand.

Fanni Edőcs was born into a musical family in Budapest. She discovered the harpsichord at the age of fourteen. In 2004, she won the second prize, than two years later the first prize of the National Harpsichord Competition. She studied at Liszt Academy, Budapest (class of Anikó Horváth, János Sebestyén and Ágnes Ratkó) where she was awarded an ‘excellent’ master diploma in 2014. She was also working with Nicholas Parle at Hochschule für Musik und Theater Leipzig, where she was a scholarship holder. In summer academies and masterclasses she worked with professors such as Gordon Murray, Bernhard Klapprott, Ketil Haugsand, Pierre Hantai etc. She performs regularly as a continuo player in different ensembles (Les Jardin des Arts, Budapest Bach Consort) in Hungary and in Europe. As she would like to stay always open towards new experiences, Fanni likes to contribute in alternative musical groups and projects. In 2014, she founded the Budapest based Recurring Company.

Kinga Gáborjáni, originally from Hungary,studied baroque cello with Jennifer Ward Clarke and viola da gamba with Richard Campbell at the Royal Academy of Music in London, where she gained her postgraduate degree with distinction.Kinga performs with many UK period instrument orchestras with whom she has toured all over the world. Since 2008, she has played Cello, Gamba and Lirone for Sir John Eliot Gardiner, since 2022 as a principal cellist.She was principal cellist for the English Touring Opera for 8 years and she has been guest principal cellist with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the English Concert.She is part of chamber groups and viol consorts, as well as giving recitals as a soloist.Kinga also teaches and gives masterclasses internationally and works as a mindset coach.

Zsuzsi Tóth was born in Hungary where she began her musical studies with the piano at the age of seven. She started classical singing at the Faculty of Music of the University of Szeged, receiving a Master’s degree in 2004. She went on to specialise in Early Music at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, where she was awarded a Bachelor’s degree, and in 2009 earned her Master’s with distinction as a student of Peter Kooij, Jill Feldman and Rita Dams. She also participated in masterclasses given by Martin Klietmann, Mitsuko Shirai, Júlia Hamari, Marius van Altena, László Polgár, Adrienne Csengery and received coaching from Charles Toet and Nigel North. During her studies she won a Hungarian State Grant (2002-3), as well as the Huygens Programma Scholarship in The Netherlands (2006-7).  Zsuzsi has won prizes in several international singing competitions and was the first-prize winner in both the Gyurkovics Mária Singing Competition (Budapest, Hungary 2003) and the Simándy József Singing Competition (Szeged, Hungary 2004). She performs regularly throughout Europe and beyond and has appeared as soloist with Collegium Vocale Gent (Philippe Herreweghe), Nederlandse Bach Vereniging (Jos van Veldhoven), Goeyvaerts Trio, Les Muffatti, Pannon Filharmonikusok and Tetraktys (Kees Boeke). She has been a regular member of Vox Luminis (Lionel Meunier) for ten years. Her discography includes numerous recordings with Collegium Vocale Gent, Vox Luminis and medieval music ensemble Tetraktys, the Bach motets and the Schütz madrigals with Sette Voci and discs of contemporary music with Sete Lagrimas and Goeyvaerts Trio.

Barnabás Hegyi, the Hungarian counter-tenor, studied conducting, singing, church music, composition and organ playing at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest. He was awarded the Bachelor degree in Early Music singing at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague as a student of Michael Chance, Rita Dams, Jill Feldmann and Peter Kooy. He attended Tilburg Music Academy where he completed his Master’s in Early Music Singing He has won awards at several singing competitions; 1st prizes at the National Singing Competition for Secondary Music Students in 2001 as well as at the National Simándi Singing Competition in 2002. Later, in 2003 he was awarded 3rd prize at the singing competition in Irun, Spain, which same competition he came as first in 2005. In 2007 Barnabás Hegyi faced three major challenges. First he gained the only counter-tenor role for Monteverdi’s Orfeoat the competition organized to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the piece in Verona and thus sang Pastore at the piece’s gala performance in Mantova. Soon after this he sang successfully at two singing competitions in Hungary; he won 3rd prize at the International Handel Singing Competition and 1st prize at the International Oratory Singing Competition. He also gave a solo concert at Hebden Bridge Arts Festival in England. Barnabás Hegyi’s co-operation with Budapest Chamber Opera is also due to his competition results. Besides, Barnabás Hegyi has sung in A:N:S Choir and Purcell Choir, and in vocal ensembles Voces Aequales and Arpa d’O. He sings regularly with ensembles such as the Huelgas Ensemble, Nederlands Kamerkoor and Nederlandse Bachvereniging Barnabás Hegyi can be heard on more than 30 CD recordings as soloist, choir- or vocal ensemble singer, or piano/organ accompanist.

Johanna Oehler was born 1999 in Werdau, Germany. When she was 4 years old, she took her first lessons in recorder playing. During her musical education at the Robert Schumann Konservatorium Zwickau she discovered her interest in ancient music and attended masterclasses for example by Myriam Eichberger and Kees Boeke. After reaching her A Level in 2018 she startet studying the recorder with Marco Scorticati, Sheng Fang Chiu and Robert Ehrlich, which she finally completed in 2024. In addition, she studied the transverse flute with Anne Freitag. During her studies in Leipzig, she got lessons in improvisation in ancient music with Martin Erhardt. With him she started to conduct classes in improvisation after finishing her studies. Johanna Oehler gives concerts with ensembles like the Capella Jenensis, the Batzdorfer Hofkapelle, the Sächsisches Barockorchester, the Lautten Compagney, the Gellert Ensemble, the Gewandhausorchestra Leipzig and the Neue Hofkapelle Osnabrück and teaches the recorder at the music school Johann Sebastian Bach Leipzig. Besides she is member of the Ensemble Musica Colorata Berlin, with whom she recorded her first CD production in 2021, the Ensemble Lachrymae Leipzig and the Ensemble Forbicina Leipzig.

Laura Dümpelmann began her studies of recorder and historical double reed instruments after completing a degree in geophysics. She has been living and studying at music universities in Versailles, Weimar and Graz since then and now lives in northern Germany. She has kind of always been been fascinated by the architecture between early middle ages and renaissance and the moment she knew that mensural notation existed she decided to specialize in the 14th to early 16th century repertoire. In this context she enjoys composed and improvised polyphony and diminutions in (recorder) consort and vocal practice. Among her teachers were Pierre Boragno, Myriam Eichberger, Martin Erhardt, Andreas Böhlen and Amy Power. Laura´s two main groups are sféra (www.sferaensemble.com) and Hanse Pfeyfferey (www.hansepfeyfferey.com), an ensemble to dedicated to loud renaissance wind instruments. Having historical windbands and their repertoire in mind it is a great coincidence that she initiated a research project: in collaboration with Dávid Budai and Prof. Susanne Scholz she is working on the reconstruction of the cantus part of the earliest printed collection of dance music from german and polish regions and a complete edition of this music. Her teaching activities are naturally connected to her interests and mostly happen as workshops or masterclasses.

Dávid Budai is a chamber musician, soloist, specialist in historical improvisation and its pedagogical techniques. He continued his studies at the Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Academy of Music in Leipzig and the University of the Arts Bremen under Hille Perl and Irene Klein, and at the National University of Music in Lyon as a student of viola da gamba at Marianne Muller. In master classes, he followed the playing style of Wieland Kuijken, Vittorio Ghielmi, Kristóf Urbanetz and Asako Morikawa (Fretwork). His improvisation masters are Martin Erhardt, Barnabé Janin, Jean-Yves Haymoz and Marco Ambrosini. In addition to playing the viola da gamba, he also mastered the technique of violone and renaissance violins, which contributed to his extensive international chamber music activities. With the ensemble PRISMA, H.I.F. Winner of the Biber International Chamber Music Competition (Linz, Austria), sponsor of the French EEEmerging (Ambronay) program, CD sponsor, international festivals since 2015 – including Trigonale (Klagenfurt, Austria), Händel-Festspiele Göttingen, York Early Music Festival, Festival d´ Ambronay, guest of Valletta Baroque Festival (Malta), Biber Festival Wien. His research work focused on the English tablature literature, “lyra viol”, in connection with it he consulted with such musicologists and instrument makers as Annette Otterstedt and Hans Reiners in Berlin. With the violin maker Ferenc Gáll, he created a unique ensemble of the early seventeenth century in 2007, which has been available for testing in the summer old music courses of Szabolcs Illés since 2018.

The Japanese lutenist Asako Ueda is based in the Netherlands, pursuing her passion for early music performance, especially chamber music from the 15th to 17th centuries. She won first prize at the Biagio Marini Competition (DE), third prize at the International Van Wassenaer Competition (NL), and second prize at London International Festival of Music (UK). She has played at several music festivals and concert halls, among which Concertgebouw Amsterdam (NL), Amuz (BE), The New National Theatre Tokyo (JP), the Utrecht Early Music Festival (2020 and season 2021, 2024), Laus Polyphoniae (2021 and 2023, as one of selected IYAP ensembles), Wonderfeel (2019), and Bach Academie Brugge (2019), and she is selected for the Artist-in-Residence Programme offered by the Schloss Weißenbrunn Foundation (2024).  She constantly collaborates with the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century (NL), B’Rock (BE), Maarten Engeltjes & prjct Amsterdam (NL), Amsterdam Sinfonietta (NL), El Gran Teatro del Mundo (ES), Lucie Horsch, and Elisabeth Hetherington. She is a co-founder of Sponte Sua (duo with Pablo Sosa, traverso) and Duo Minoriten (duo with Minori Deguchi, baroque violin).In 2019, she established herself not only as a trusted ensemble player but also as a prominent soloist, giving solo recitals on theorbo at the Luitdag of the Dutch Lute Society, and on Renaissance lute at the Dag van het Kasteel.

Zsuzsanna Gyurina started her musical studies in Nagykanizsa and Pécs in Hungary.She graduated in the flute class of Zsuzsa Szeléndi at the University of Pécs.
She became interested in early music while at secondary school, and started to participate in masterclasses held by Benedek Csalog and Barthold Kuijken.From 1998 to 2004 she was professor of flute at the Farkas Ferenc Music School in Nagykanizsa and at the High School of Dance and Music at Pécs.Since 2002 she has been playing the baroque flute, using an instrument made by Rudolf Tutz. In 2003 she attended the Conservatory of Vienna, studying at the early music department with Reinhard Czasch and Luciano Contini. In the academic years 2004 and 2005 she continued her studies at the Brussels Royal Conservatory in the class of Barthold Kuijken and Frank Theuns, graduating with Honours. Since 2006 she has been pursuing the postgraduate program of chamber music at the Brussels Royal Conservatory, with the help of a scholarship by the Flemish government. In this period she also founded the chamber music ensemble ”Ellyptica”. She has played together with numerous baroque ensembles, such as Orfeo Orchestra (Budapest, conducted by Vashegyi György), Budapest Chamber Opera (conducted by Németh Pál), Musica Rivelata (Dominik Riepe), Solamente Naturali (Milos Valent), Haydn Sinfonietta Wien (Manfred Huss) and with the baroque orchestra of the Royal Conservatory of Brussels (directed by Sigiswald Kuijken and Ryo Terakado).

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