Performers

Since its earliest days, Filharmonie Brno has established a profile as a Janáčkian orchestra, thus making a substantial contribution to the cultural life of Brno — where Leoš Janáček composed nearly his entire oeuvre — and becoming an enthusiastic champion of his music. Since its foundation in 1956, the orchestra has regularly performed Janáček’s works in concerts at home and abroad; it has also recorded, multiple times, his complete symphonic works and cantatas.

NdBrass was established in 2015 by the members of the Janáček Opera of the National Theater in Brno. The members are seasoned orchestra soloists with a passion for chamber music, continuous improvement, and innovation. Their common interests led them to form a group with the ability to interpret not only standard repertoire but also to offer new and unique programs.

Mika has toured to 19 countries and 65 cities around the world. She has performed 10 times at Carnegie Hall (Zankel and Weill Hall), as well as at PASIC 2005 and 2007, the Blue Note in New York, the Tokyo and Cairo Jazz Festivals, and the Rockport Jazz Festival. She regularly performs around the world in a duo with her husband, clarinetist Richard Stoltzman, at major venues in New York, Boston, Austin, Buenos Aires, Mexico, Hong Kong, Japan, Germany, and many more.

Kenneth Thompkins was appointed Principal Trombone of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra by Neeme Jarvi. Prior to this appointment, he held positions in the Buffalo Philharmonic, The Florida Orchestra, and the New World Symphony Orchestra. He has also performed with the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, and Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Tamas Szigyarto was born and raised in St. Petersburg, Russia. He was schooled in classical piano from the age of 10 and progressed into drums & percussion from 17. For the following decade, he played in numerous alternative rock bands. Szigyarto studied Mathematics at St.Petersburg State University (graduated with MSc. in Math in 2006) and Commercial Music Performance at Tech Music School (BIMM Institute) in London. Here he met and played with London’s alt pop trio Fassine.

Called “enchanting” by the Boston Globe, flutist Sarah Brady is sought after across the country as a soloist, chamber musician, and master teacher. An avid promoter of new music, she has premiered and recorded new music from many of today’s top composers. Recent projects have included premieres of new solo flute and electronic music from Elena Ruehr, Andy Vores, Marti Epstein, Reinaldo Moya and John Mallia, and Curtis Hughes, as well as music for flute and strings from Marcos Balter, Nicholas Vines, and Johnathan Bailey Holland. Her solo, chamber, and over 50 orchestral recordings can be heard on the Albany, Naxos, Oxingale, Cantaloupe and BMOP/Sound music labels. As a leading interpreter of contemporary music, she was invited to read and record new music commissioned by Yo Yo Ma for his Silk Road Project at Tanglewood.

Santiago Kodela is an award-winning Classical Guitarist & Composer working in the areas of concert, solo instrument, chamber, and choral music. His works explore various aspects of sound and harmony, adventuring intensely into the areas of iso-rhythms, metric modulation, and chord harmonization. In 2022 the album PINNACLE VOL. 2 was awarded the 2nd Prize Silver Medal by North-American Global Music Awards in the classical category. Furthermore, his piece Delicate Soliloquies was shortlisted as a finalist in the 2nd Composition Competition by the Dutch Guitar Foundation by a jury integrated by Steve Goss, JacobTV, and Nikita Koshkin.

Aaron Haas and Anastasia Malliaras of Duo Apollon perform art song repertoire for voice and classical guitar. With grace, poise, and fearless expressivity, they bring new life to repertoire originally written for voice and piano, and showcase song cycles rarely heard written specifically for the voice and guitar ensemble. The pair met while studying music at the University of Southern California and began by performing The Divan of Moses ibn Ezra by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. After playing a number of recitals at the University, they began to branch out and play at various venues throughout Los Angeles.

Peter Paulsen is an active performer on the Philadelphia jazz scene as well as Assistant Principal Bass of the Harrisburg Symphony Orchestra and Principal Bass of the Allentown Symphony Orchestra. He has received three PA Council on the Arts composition grants and was recognized with a PEW Fellowship in Composition. Paulsen has released five critically acclaimed CDs of his compositions: Three-Stranded Cord by Peter Paulsen Quintet; Tri-Cycle by Peter Paulsen Trio; Peter Paulsen Change of Scenery Sextet; Goes Without Saying by Peter Paulsen Quintet; and A Few Thoughts by Peter Paulsen Trio.

Dieter Flury was born and brought up in Zurich (Switzerland) and studied with Hans Meyer (Principal Flute of the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich), André Jaunet (at the Zurich Music Academy), and Aurèle Nicolet. In addition to his flute studies he graduated in mathematics at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. At age 25 he was appointed a member of the Vienna State Opera Orchestra and in 1981 he was named Principal Flute of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.

The Zagreb Festival Orchestra was founded in 1989, comprised of the top classical performers in Croatia and formed with the intent to record a single album. That intent was fulfilled with OVERTURES, a record of composer Gioachino Rossini’s greatest operatic works conducted by the acclaimed maestro Michael Halász, a resident conductor at the Vienna State Opera for 20 years, and produced by six-time GRAMMY Award winner Martin Sauer.

The pianist Lucie Kaucká was born on March 31, 1978 in Kraslice near Karlovy Vary, where she began studying music at the age of seven. She continued her piano studies at the Conservatory of Teplice and the Conservatory of Pardubice with Martin Hröel. After graduation from Pardubice she concentrated on the study of musicology at the Palacky University in Olomouc and finished successfully there in 2003.

Originally known as The South Bohemian State Orchestra, the South Czech Philharmonic, based in České Budějovice (Budweis), was founded in 1981. Today, it comprises 39 artists and remains the only professional philharmonic orchestra in the South Bohemian region.

Rae Howell is an award-winning Australian composer and multi-instrumentalist. She is founding director of Sunwrae, a music performance and production enterprise, and works across a vast range of music concert hall and multi-artform projects. She has studied music in Melbourne, London, and New York; she lectures in music and creative industry subjects; and has worked professionally in many places across the globe, producing a large catalog of original music albums, publications, and collaborative recordings.

Karolina Rojahn is a Los Angeles based pianist who has dedicated the last decade of her career to premiering and recording contemporary music repertoire. She has premiered over a hundred new works and collaborated with various classical music labels, most notably Naxos, having released over 43 recordings of chamber and solo piano music, including 5 piano concertos written specifically for her.

The Axiom Quartet is a dynamic professional ensemble based in Houston, TX. The group is known for creating and performing programs that mix traditional string quartet repertoire and transcriptions of works from a variety of genres (including jazz, electronic, rock, indie, etc.). By combining these genres, the quartet exposes classical music audiences to extraordinary music from different genres, and creates new fans of the classical repertoire.

Vox Futura is New England's premier recording choir for composers, recording artists, film, television, and video games. Past projects have included work with internationally distributed classical production house PARMA Recordings, video game companies Nintendo and Bandai Namco, legendary German power metal band Blind Guardian, and platinum selling world music artist Sami Yusef.

Chilean-American violist Georgina Isabel Rossi is on the faculty of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile’s Instituto de Música. Her first album, Mobili: Music for Viola and Piano from Chile (New Focus Recordings), was praised as “expertly played” (WQXR), “a startling new recording” (CVNC Journal), and was one of KDFC’s picks for “Favorite Albums of the Year.” She plays a Buenos Aires-made viola by Leonardo Anderi from 2014, and a bow by Christian Wilhelm Knopf.

Chinese-Canadian pianist Silvie Cheng has performed in esteemed concert halls on five continents, from the California Center for the Arts to Brussels’ Flagey Hall, and the University of South Africa to Shanghai’s Poly Theatre. Close collaborations with composers of our time have led to over 50 world premieres since 2010, in such venues as Carnegie Hall, Cornell University, and the National Gallery of Canada. She tours extensively as the pianist of the Cheng² Duo and is a teaching-artist of The Orto Center at the Manhattan School of Music in New York City.

Ukranian violinist Myroslava Khomik brings her love of music-making not only to the prestigious concert halls and festivals around the world, but also to the curation and collaboration of multimedia projects. Known for her “virtue of musical sensitivity and beautiful emotion” (Saigon Times), Khomik is passionate about innovative programming, mixing different art forms, and looking for depth beyond creative expression. She regularly participates in premieres of new works, and initiates new commissions inspired by the subjects she feels are particularly important in today’s world. After her tour in South America in 2018 presenting an all-Ukrainian composers program, Khomik was awarded a New Artist of the year prize in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and was featured on various TV and radio broadcasts in the United States and abroad.