Jean-Baptiste Dupont enjoys a musician international career. He performed more than 500 recitals in most of the European countries, in the USA and in Russia, in prestigious venues (Cathedrals from Paris, New-York, Berlin, London, Köln, Copenhague, Mariinsky concert hall, Bolchoï Theatre, etc...). He has a broad repertoire ranging from the Renaissance to the present days, including many transcriptions. Jean-Baptiste Dupont has been hailed as one of the greatest young improvisers on the organ. He is a frequent guest performer at international festivals, radios, etc. As a specialist of improvisation, he’s regularly invited to give Masterclasses and Workshops on that field. He has been a Jury member in competitions in France, USA and Germany. Born in 1979, Jean-Baptiste Dupont began his musical studies at the piano. He discovered the organ later, at the age of 12, and began organ studies at the Institute of Sacred Music of Toulouse. He graduated with distinction from the organ department at the Conservatoire in Toulouse. As one of the top alumni of the Conservatoire, he was awarded the Francis Vidal prize by the city of Toulouse in 2006 and subsequently continued his studies at the Centre d’Etudes Supérieures de Musique et Danse in Toulouse where he obtained performing and teaching diplomas. Jean-Baptiste Dupont’s organ, improvisation, harpsichord and piano teachers included Michel Bouvard, Louis Robilliard, Philippe Lefebvre, Jan Willem Jansen and Thérèse Dussaut. He was finalist and laureate in many organ competitions, both in interpretation and improvisation. He won the 1st prize (improvisation) in St-Albans international competition in July 2009 ; the 2nd prize, audience prize, Glinka and De Boni Arte foundations prizes in "Mikael Tariverdiev" competition in Kaliningrad, Russia, 2009 ; and the 3rd prize in “Xavier Darasse” international competition (Toulouse, France) in October 2008. Latest releases include Widor symphonie n°8 for the label Audite. His work on Max Reger’s complete organ works have been acclaimed by international press and gained an international recognition, and subsequently, Jean-Baptiste Dupont was invited in several symposium and international events about the composer. Jean-Baptiste Dupont was appointed organist at Bordeaux Cathedral after a competition which took place in April 2012. He was founder and artistic director of Cathedra (sacred music at Bordeaux Cathedral) from 2014 to 2019, and speaks up for the rebuilding of the cathedral organ.

Ann-Helena Schlüter is one of the most versatile artists of her generation and enjoys international renown as a concert pianist and organist, and also as a composer, poet and writer of books. Born into a family of pianists, the German-Swedish musician received her first lessons from her parents, Ann-Margret and Prof. Karl-Heinz Schlüter. She went on to study piano, organ, composition, musicology, music and instrumental education, which took her to Perth, Australia, as well as Arizona State University, Phoenix, USA. She completed her training as a concert pianist with Bernd Glemser and as a concert organist with Pieter van Dijk and Christoph Bossert. International masterclasses with, amongst others, Hakim, Latry, Roth, Jacobs, Perticaroli, Schmeding, Gulda, Weissenberg, Kämmerling, Gililov, Margulis, Badura-Skoda and Hewitt complemented her training. Ann-Helena Schlüter won prizes at the International Piano Competitions in Nuremberg, Munich, London and Ettlingen as well as at the Steinway Piano Competition in Hamburg and in Italy. Prior to that she won several first and special prizes as well as scholarships at the Jugend musiziert competition, and also at international literary competitions. She is a sought-after soloist worldwide on the piano and organ. In addition to numerous concert engagements in Germany and other European countries, she has appeared in Israel, Russia, Africa and Nepal, in the Philippines, Australia, the USA and Asia, performing alongside renowned orchestras such as the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie, the Jena Philharmonie, the Nuremberg Staatsphilharmonie, the MasterWorks Festival Orchestra and various chamber orchestras at distinguished venues, including the Leipzig Gewandhaus, Stuttgart Liederhalle, Salzburg Mozarteum, Berlin Admiralspalast, Nuremberg Meistersingerhalle, Schloss Elmau and the Laeiszhalle in Hamburg. Numerous recordings for the Bavarian, North German and Saarland Radio with piano and organ document her work. Schlüter has received scholarships from the DAAD, Erasmus, the Gisela Bartels Foundation, the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, the Oscar and Vera Ritter Foundation, the Neumann Foundation Frankfurt, the Richard Wagner Foundation Bayreuth and the Salzburg Festival, among others. She has taught her own piano class at the Universität and Hochschule für Musik Würzburg, devoting herself intensively to nurturing young talent as well as teaching the music of Bach.

The 32-year-old conductor Dominik Beykirch has been shaping the artistic profile of the Deutsches Nationaltheater (DNT) and the Staatskapelle Weimar since the 2015/16 season. Initially engaged as Kapellmeister, he was appointed "Chief Conductor Music Theatre" in 2020. With the 2023/2024 season, he will continue his ongoing work as music director. Highlights of the 2023/2024 music theatre season at the DNT for Dominik Beykirch are the new productions of Richard Wagner's Der fliegende Holländer directed by Barbora Horáková and Giacomo Puccini's opera cycle Il Trittico (director: Dirk Schmeding). The programme also includes Richard Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos in Martin G. Berger's award-winning production (FAUST Prize 2020) and Vincenzo Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi, a joint work with Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito from spring 2023. In the symphonic field, Dominik Beykirch will perform with pianist Frank Dupree, among others. The two artists share an intensive collaboration, particularly audible on the CD with Nikolai Kapustin's Fifth Piano Concerto (Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Capriccio), which was released in February 2023. For this award-winning recording (International Classical Music Award, Diapason d'Or), Dominik Beykirch was nominated as Conductor of the Year for the OPUS-Klassik. Further CD recordings with works by the Ukrainian composer are planned. Dominik Beykirch returns to the Dresden Philharmonic and the Brandenburg State Orchestra Frankfurt, among others, as a guest conductor. In Dresden, he will conduct works by Richard Strauss, Korngold, and Rachmaninoff (soloist: Cameron Carpenter) in Potsdam and Frankfurt/Oder works by Haydn, Orff and Mendelssohn. With his opera conductorships at the DNT, Dominik Beykirch repeatedly sets internationally acclaimed standards. For instance, on his initiative, the opera Samson by the Swiss composer Joachim Raff was performed for the first time after 170 years in October 2022 (directed by Calixto Bieito), and the radio recording was broadcast in Austria and Switzerland, among other countries. In the 2019/2020 season, Dominik Beykirch celebrated great success with the opera Lanzelot by Paul Dessau, which was performed for the first time in 40 years. The journal "Opernwelt" awarded the production directed by Peter Konwitschny as "Rediscovery of the Year" and at the same time nominated Dominik Beykirch as "Conductor of the Year". The CD label Audite released the recording of the entire opera in January 2023. The recording, which received much attention from the press, was awarded the German Record Critics' Prize and the "CD of the Year" ("Opernwelt"), among others. His musical direction of new productions such as Aida (director: Andrea Moses) or L'italiana in Algeri (director: Tobias Kratzer), was also met with great response from audiences and the press. Dominik Beykirch has already worked with numerous renowned orchestras, such as the symphony orchestras of the HR, MDR, WDR and SWR (German broadcast services), the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, the Dresden Philharmonic, the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, the Duisburg Philharmonic, the Jena Philharmonic, the Staatskapelle Halle, the Bremen Philharmonic, the Nuremberg Symphony, the Philharmonie Zuidnederland (Netherlands), the Württemberg Philharmonic Reutlingen, the State Orchestra Rheinische Philharmonie, the Philharmonie Südwestfalen, the Hofer Symphony and the Folkwang Chamber Orchestra Essen. He has also been a guest conductor at the Leipzig Opera, the Kassel State Theatre and the Chemnitz Theatre and has conducted numerous performances at the Dresden State Operetta. He has also conducted important rehearsals for Markus Poschner, Andres Orozco-Estrada and Christoph Eschenbach, among others, and worked with soloists such as Jens Peter Maintz, Claudio Bohórquez, Nemanja Radulovic, Harriet Krijgh, Michael Barenboim and Jan Vogler. In 2020, the album Clarinet Concertos was released on the Berlin Classics label, on which clarinettist Sebastian Manz interprets the Clarinet Concerto by Danish composer Carl Nielsen, composed in 1928, together with the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken under the direction of Dominik Beykirch. Dominik Beykirch also recorded Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf with the Dresden Philharmonic for Berlin Classics (narrator: Malte Arkona). His numerous awards include the second prize of 10,000 euros at the German Conducting Prize 2017, first prize at the 6th German University Competition for Orchestral Conducting, as well as sponsorship prizes from the publishing houses Bärenreiter and Breitkopf & Härtel and the Ernst von Schuch Prize. Dominik Beykirch was a scholarship holder in the Conductors' Forum of the German Music Council and was on the artist list "Maestros of Tomorrow" from 2016 to 2019. He is also an alumnus of the German National Academic Foundation and a consultant for choral symphonies at Werkgemeinschaft Musik e.V. In the 2013/14 season, he was Michael Sanderling's assistant at the Dresden Philharmonic. Dominik Beykirch completed his musical education at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in the conducting classes of Prof. Nicolás Pasquet, Prof. Gunter Kahlert and Martin Hoff in Weimar. At the same time, he received enriching artistic impulses from numerous master classes with Bernard Haitink, Jukka-Pekka Saraste and Ton Koopman, among others. He now passes on his knowledge as a lecturer for the German Music Council (Conducting Forum) and as part of a teaching assignment at the Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Academy of Music and Theatre in Leipzig. Status: October 2023

It is, of course, every musician’s dream to at some stage be able to play with the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic Orchestras. At just 21 years of age, Sarah Christ had played in both these world famous orchestras. Born in 1980, Sarah began playing the harp at the age of 10. For a whole year she, who had been playing and continued to play both the violin and the piano, had to beg to be allowed to receive a harp and harp lessons. And thus the harp was introduced into this musical ensemble, the Christ family: The famous Martinu Oboe Concerto was written for and dedicated to Sarah’s grandfather, first oboist in the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, and Sarah’s father had for 22 years been the leader of the violas in the Berlin Philharmonic. “In Kindergarten I had already begun to regularly attend the Berlin Philharmonic concerts and also other concerts my father played in. I can still remember the great aura surrounding Herbert von Karajan and when I shook his hand as a little girl in Salzburg in the ‘Festspielhaus’. I love playing together with my father and brother, which I have been able to do on multiple occasions in the Luzern Festival Orchestra with Claudio Abbado.” At the age of 13, Sarah Christ gave her debut as a soloist with the Berlin Symphonic Orchestra in the Berlin Philharmonic hall. Since then, she has played as a soloist with the Jenaer Philharmonic orchestra, the Sinfonietta Cologne, the Kuerpfalzischen Kammerorchestra, the Prague Opera, the Dresden Kapellsolisten and the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra, just to name a few. Sarah regularly plays with brother and violinist Raphael Christ, and in 2006 together they were able to win first prize in the Kulturkreises des Bundes der Deutschen Industrie Competition. “The phase in my life that cemented my desire to become a musician was my involvement in the Mahler Youth Orchestra. I was 17 at the time, still at school, and playing with conductors like Claudio Abaddo, Seiji Ozawa and Franz Welser-Moest left an incredible impression on me; it was definitely an honour. At that time I was also very involved in the piano and had even toyed with the idea of studying it. These trips with the youth orchestra, however, made it clear to me that I simply had to pursue the harp because as a pianist you don’t have nearly as many opportunities to play in an orchestra.” In 1999, Sarah embarked on her studies in Detmold with Catherine Michel, continued by studying in Lyon with Fabrice Pierre and later completed her studies with a Masterkalssendiplom Karmmermusik after having studied under Helga Storck in Munich. Her initial leap onto the highest rung of the musical ladder in 2002 came about through her engagement in the Vienna Opera Orchestra at the age of 21, making her one of the youngest members of the orchestra. "I have known Sarah Christ for several years and have watched her development with interest and joy. She is equally at home in the orchestra, as my concerts with the Vienna Philharmonic have proven, as well as in different kinds of chamber music ensembles, where her performance is always of the highest standard." Daniel Barenboim, 2003 Feeling as though she was still too young to settle into a permanent orchestral position, Sarah Christ left the Vienna Opera after two years in order to pursue the fields of Chamber music and solo performance. She also played in orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic, the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Bayerischen Staatsoper, the Bayerischen Rundfunk Symphony Orchestra and the Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig and has, since 2004, been repeatedly invited by Claudio Abbado to take part in the Luzern Festival Orchestra. Sarah Christ has also received a scholarship from the Deutschen Musikrates and together with Sandra Schumacher (oboe) they formed the duet ‘Harbois’ and toured throughout Germany playing concerts. She has also played chamber music in festivals such as Tanglewood, Lockenhaus, the Edinburgh Festival, the Luzern Festival, the Moritzburg Festival, the Schwetzinger Musikfestspielen, as well as in the Carnegie Hall together with Emmanuel Pahud, Wolfgang Schulz, Jan Vogler, Albrecht Mayer, Renaud Capucon and Eckhardt Haupt. In 2013 Sarah Christ gave her debut in Wigmore Hall playing a Schubert Liederabend with baritone Matthias Goerne. Not exclusively involved in playing, Sarah Christ is also well acquainted with the art of teaching. She has taught in the Schleswig Holstein Musikfestival, in the Sommerakademie der Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes in 2012, in the Mahler Chamber Orchestra academy and was invited as a guest professor to the Orchesterzentrum Dortmund. She lives with her husband, horn player in the Staatskapelle Dresden, and daughter in Dresden.