Thomas Quasthoff is considered one of the most notable singers of his discipline, appearing regularly with the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics and with many other leading orchestras around the world, as well as being a higly-successfull chamber music and concert singer at all important concert stages and festivals throughout the world. He has collaborated closely with prominent conductors such as Claudio Abbado, Daniel Barenboim, Bernard Haitink, Mariss Jansons, Kurt Masur, Seiji Ozawa, Sir Simon Rattle, Helmuth Rilling, Christian Thielemann, and Franz Welser-Möst.
Quasthoff’s debut at the Oregon Bach Festival in 1995 set the cornerstone for his rapid rise to prominence in the US. Since then, he has become a popular guest performer with key American orchestras and at major US festivals. He also performs regularly at New York’s Carnegie Hall, where he presented his celebrated recital debut with Schubert’s Winterreise in 1999.
Thomas Quasthoff has already served as artist in residence at Vienna’s Musikverein, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Carnegie Hall, and at the Lucerne Festival.
Since 1999, Thomas Quasthoff has been under exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft. Beside many other prizes and Grammy nominations, three of his CDs were awarded a Grammy, his recording of Mahler’s Lieder aus des Knaben Wunderhorn with Anne Sofie von Otter under the direction of Claudio Abbado, and his CD of orchestrated Schubert songs performed with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, also under the direction of Claudio Abbado. He won a third Grammy in 2006 for his recording of Bach cantatas with the Berliner Barocksolisten.
Thomas Quasthoff received his vocal training from Charlotte Lehmann and Ernst Huber-Contwig in Hannover. He has received numerous national and international awards—including first prize at the Internationaler Musikwettbewerb der ARD in Munich (1988) the Shostakovich Prize in Moscow (1996), and the Hamda Trust/Scotsman Festival Prize (Edinburgh International Festival 1996). In 1996, Quasthoff began teaching at Detmold’s Musikhochschule, in the fall of 2004 taking a position at Berlin’s Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler, where he has intensely dedicated his efforts to training of the next generation of singers. Part of this is the competition that he called into being, which took place in 2009 for the first time in Berlin.
Paris, the Théâtre des Champs Elysées Paris, the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie Bruxelles and the New National Theatre Tokyo and at the Salzburg Easter Festival, the Salzburg Festival, the Innsbruck and Vienna festivals and Styriarte Graz.
Her most important roles include Armida, the Contessa, Donna Elvira, Fiordiligi, Pamina, Aminta, Genoveva, Antonia, Freia and the Goose Girl. Concerts and Lieder recitals have taken her to the Schubertiade in Schwarzenberg, La Folle Journée de Nantes, and to Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Monaco, Salzburg, London, Brussels and Naples. She works with such conductors as Seiji Ozawa, Daniel Barenboim, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Sir Simon Rattle, Marek Janowski, René Jacobs, Ivor Bolton, Bertrand de Billy and Fabio Luisi.
Annette Dasch is to be seen and heard in the title role of Armida at this year's Salzburg Festival. Her other engagements include the Japan visit of the Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin, Don Giovanni with Daniel Barenboim in Berlin, the new production of Idomeneo at the Bayerische Staatsoper with Kent Nagano and Das Paradies und die Peri in Vienna with Nikolaus Harnoncourt and the Vienna Philharmonic. Further concerts are planned with Helmuth Rilling, Marek Janowski and Ivor Bolton. Annette Dasch is a SonyBMG exclusive artist and released her first album of arias in July 2007. She received the German ECHO Classical 2008 award for best aria recording for this CD.
Brigitte Fassbaender was born in Berlin and studied voice with her father, Willy Domgraf-Fassbaender. She debuted with the Munich Staatsoper and over the years sang all the important roles in her field. She was a guest at all leading opera houses in the world, working with all the important conductors of our time. Concert and chamber performances played an ever-increasing role in her work as a musician over the years. She has made over 200 recordings during her career. Early in 1995, Brigitte Fassbaender ended her singing career to dedicate herself fully to directing, which has been her major interest since 1990. Since then, she has presented over 40 productions in Germany and abroad. She is also highly in demand as a voice teacher and offers master classes. From 1995 to 1997 she was opera director at Staatstheater Braunschweig. Since then, she has worked as a freelance director; for the 1999/2000 season she was director of Tirol Landestheater in Innsbruck, and since 2009 has been artistic director at the Richard Strauss Festival.
Robert Gambill is one of the most sought-after heroic tenors and appears at leading opera houses and concert halls in Europe and overseas. In 1999, he sang Tannhäuser for the first time under the direction of Daniel Barenboim at Staatsoper Unter den Linden, and since then has sung in Madrid, Munich, Toulouse, Dresden, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Hamburg, Milan, Baden-Baden, San Diego, and Barcelona, and on several tours in Japan.
As Florestan, Siegmund, Max, and Parsifal, he thrilled audiences in Berlin, Tokyo, Stuttgart, Dresden, Geneva, San Francisco, and Munich. A milestone in his career was his first Tristan at Glyndebourne Festival in 2003, which was filmed in 2007 and was followed by invitations to Dresden, Lisbon, Baden-Baden, and in the spring of 2009 to the Milan Scala. Besides Wagner, he sang the Prince in Humperdinck’s Königskinder, Oedipus Rex at the New York’s Metropolitan Opera under the direction of Valerij Gerghiev, Peter Grimes in Berlin, and the Salzburger Osterfestspiele, and in Dresden.
From 2005 – 2008, Robert Gambill performed as Loge and Siegmund at the Ring-Projekt in Aix-en-Provence in collaboration with the Salzburg Osterfestspiele, the Berlin Philharmonic, and Simon Rattle. In 2009, Robert Gambill could be heard as Tristan at Scala di Milano, as well as in Cologne, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Deutsche Oper Berlin and in a concert performance at Bregenz Festival. In December 2009, he interpreted this part for the first time at the Vienna State Opera.
Gambill ist also much in demand as concert singer. Carnegie Hall, Tanglewood, Philadelphia, London Proms, Santa Cecilia Rome, Berlin Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Symphony, Czech Philharmonic, Edinburgh, Salzburg und Lucerne Festival are among the important concert organizers where Robert Gambill has performed. Conductors with whom he works regularly include Daniel Barenboim, Zubin Mehta, Fabio Luisi, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Pinchas Steinberg, Jeffrey Tate, Michael Tilson-Thomas, Sir Colin Davis, and Sir Simon Rattle.
Robert Gambill was born in Indianapolis, studied voice at Hamburg’s Musikhochschule, and has lived near Hamburg for many years with his family.
Irishman John Gilhooly became director of Wigmore Hall aged 32 in 2005. He was educated at University College, Dublin, graduating in 1994 with a Bachelor of Arts in History and Political Science. In addition to his academic studies, John pursued vocal studies at Dublin City College of Music and Leinster School of Music, under the tuition of Dr Veronica Dunne, and then with baritone Neil Howlett in Manchester.
John was a prizewinner at various competitions in Ireland, and has performed on Irish television and radio. Following a period as a tutor in the Department of Modern History at University College, and as the first house manager of the O’Reilly Hall in Dublin, John moved to the UK. From 1997 to 1999 he was the Events/Concerts Manager of the Harrogate International Centre, and in 1999 he came to London as part of the initial team for ExCeL, a £300million venue situated on the Old Royal Victoria Dock.
John joined Wigmore Hall in October 2000, at which time the Hall created two co-director positions, Artistic and Executive. As Executive Director, John oversaw all financial, staffing, operational and strategic planning functions of the organisation, and led the Hall’s recent successful capital appeals and refurbishment. He is a Director of the Association of British Concert Promoters (ABCP), Honorary Secretary of The Royal Philharmonic Society, and a Trustee of The Opera Group, The London String Quartet Foundation and London Music Masters.
In 2005, John Gilhooly became overall Director of Wigmore Hall – adding artistic programming and administration to his executive role – and oversees the largest chamber music series in the world.
The pianist Charles Spencer, born in Yorkshire, studied with Max Pirani at the Academy of Music in London. Already as a student he received numerous prizes, including a stipend from the Austrian government that enabled him to continue his studies in Vienna. He graduated with honors from Vienna’s Hochschule für Musik, where he studied with Walter Fleischmann, winning the Austrian government’s prize for artistic achievement.
Charles Spencer is today one of the most sought-after piano accompanists. For ten years he was Christa Ludwig’s constant and unique concert accompanist, but also accompanied singers like Jessye Norman, Gundula Janowitz, Marjana Lipovsek, Peter Schreier, Thomas Hampson, and Thomas Quasthoff. Since 1999, Charles Spencer has taught song interpretation at Vienna’s Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst.
Richard Wagner's great-granddaughter has been joint director of the Bayreuth Festival together with her half-sister Katharina Wagner since September 1, 2008.
Eva Wagner-Pasquier was born in 1945 in Oberwarmensteinach near Bayreuth as the oldest daughter of Wolfgang Wagner and his wife Ellen, née Drexel. In 1967 she became the personal assistant of her father, sole director of the Bayreuth Festival, and was responsible among other things for the casting in Patrice Chéreau's production of the Ring cycle in 1976. Outside the festival season she assisted August Everding in London (Salome) and Otto Schenk at the Vienna State Opera (Don Carlos, Der Besuch der alten Dame). In London she was a member of the New Philharmonic Chorus, which at that time was directed by Wilhelm Pitz. After a brief spell as a trainee at the Robert Schulz artists agency in Munich in 1971, in 1972 she joined the artistic management staff of the Vienna State Opera.
From 1973 to 1984 Eva Wagner-Pasquier was an executive at Unitel Films in Munich where she oversaw more than 35 opera productions. From 1984 to 1987 she worked as an opera director at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London, and from 1989 to 1993 she was director of programming at the newly founded Opéra Bastille in Paris.
From 1993 to 1995 she was an artistic consultant at Houston Grand Opera, Texas, after which she worked in the same capacity at the Théatre du Châtelet in Paris from 1994 to 1998 as well as the new Teatro Real in Madrid with Stéphane Lissner from 1996 to 1997. Since 1996 Eva-Wagner-Pasquier has been senior artistic consultant to the New York Metropolitan Opera, and since 1997 artistic adviser of the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence and of the Académie européenne which is attached to the festival.
In recognition of her work she has been made Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. She is honorary chair of the Richard Wagner Society of Paris, member of the Bologna Music Academy, and founding member of the Louis Vuitton Foundation (later Orcofi).