Roadtrip with Jean-Guihen Queyras

Jean-Guihen Queyras (Montreal, 1967) has been involved with the Biënnale from the very start and has given countless memorable performances over the years at the festival. Queyras is known for his broad repertoire. He performs cello concertos by Haydn and Vivaldi just as well as he performs music by Dallapiccola, Kurtág, Ligeti, Webern, Boulez, and Gilbert Amy. He is a part of various chamber ensembles, including a piano trio with Isabelle Faust and Alexander Melnikov, and an ensemble with tombak specialists Kevan and Bijan Chemirani and kemenche player Sokratis Sinopoulos. In 2016 and 2018, he performed as soloist in Joël Bons’ Nomaden, which was composed specially for Queyras and the Atlas Ensemble. Queyras is a professor at the Musikhochschule in Freiburg and is the Artistic Director of the festival Rencontres Musicales de Haute-Provence. In 2022, Jean-Guihen Queyras received the Anner Bijlsma Award at the Opening Concert of the Cello Biënnale. 

Stefano Bruno (2000, Italy) is a laureate of numerous international competitions. At age 18, he won the 1st prize at the VIII International Cello Competition “David Popper” in Hungary. In 2022, he won the First Prize at the National Cello Competition. Stefano studied at the Conservatory in Foggia, Italy. He continued his studies with Giovanni Gnocchi in Bologna and with Francesco Dillon and Paolo Bonomini in Fiesole. In the past years, Stefano Bruno has been studying at the National Academy of Santa Cecilia in Rome with Giovanni Sollima and at the Conservatory of Amsterdam in the class of Pieter Wispelwey. He concluded his studies summa cum laude at both institutions. In 2022, he made his debut in the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, with a solo recital in the Kleine Zaal as well as in Elgar’s Cello Concerto conducted by Ed Spanjaard in the Grote Zaal. Stefano is a passionate chamber musician. He is a member of the Trio Eidos (piano trio), the duo Greci-Bruno (duo violin and cello), Ensemble Opificio Sonoro (ensemble for contemporary music) and regularly gives cello and piano recitals with Daniël Kramer. Stefano plays a cello made by Rene Jacquemin between 1925 and 1930 in Mirecourt.

Charlotte Miles (Melbourne 2002) is one of the four cellists selected for the  Roadtrip with Jean-Guihen Queyras – a project funded with Anner Bijlsma Award prize money – which will be presented on Monday 4 November, 17.00. At this moment she is a postgraduate student of Prof. Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt at the Hochschule für Musik “Franz Liszt” in Weimar, Germany.  She performs on a c.1760 Joseph Hill cello kindly on loan from an Australian collection.

Till Schuler (Stuttgart, 2000) is one of the four cellists selected for the Roadtrip with Jean-Guihen Queyras – a Project funded with Anner Bijlsma Award prize money – which will be presented on Monday 4 November, 17.00.  He studied with Valentin Radutiu at the Hmt Rostock and since then at the HfMT Hamburg with Prof. Sebastian Klinger. Till received further musical impulses from Prof. Wen-Sinn-Yang, Prof. Maria Kliegel, Prof. Gotthard Popp and Prof. Wolfgang Lehner. In 2020, Till won first prize at the 12th International Antonio Janigro Junior Competition in Zagreb, as well as a concert with the Dubrovnik Symphony Orchestra. In 2020 he won a first prize at the "Gustav Mahler Prize Cello Competition 2021" as well as the special prize of the jury chairman. Since February 2019, Till has been playing a cello by Georges Chanot from Paris from 1840, which has been made available to him by the Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben.

Ülker Tümer (Turkey, 1998) is one of the four cellists selected for the Roadtrip with Jean-Guihen Queyras – a project funded with Anner Bijlsma Award prize money – which will be presented on Monday 4 November. Since 2021, she studies at the Reina Sofía School of Music’s Aline Foriel-Destezet Cello Chair, first with professor Ivan Monighetti and currently with professor Jens Peter Maintz.  She began her cello studies in 2009 with Viacheslav Kaynov at the University of Çukurova’s State Conservatory and furthered her training with Dilbağ Tokay between 2013 and 2016 at the Istanbul State Conservatory of the Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts and, until 2021, at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg in Germany under the guidance of Jean-Guihen Queyras.