Tutors

FRANCESCO FILIDEI, composer

Francesco Filidei was born in Pisa. He graduated from the Luigi Cherubini Conservatory in Florence, and from the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris. As an organist and composer, he has been invited to participate in major contemporary music festivals internationally. He has been played with a number of world-class orchestras, including WDR, SWR, RSO Wien, ORT, RAI, the Tokyo Philharmonic, Bayerischen Rundfunk, LaVerdi, the Philharmonic Orchestras of Monte Carlo, Nice, Picardie, Helsinki, Vilnius and Warsaw, the Orchestre Symphonique de Bretagne and the OPL, the Orchestre of Mexique; and with most of the world’s the leading specialized ensembles at venues such as the Philharmonie in Berlin, Köln, Essen, Hamburg, Cité de la Musique in Paris, Suntory Hall and the Tokyo Opera House, Theaterhaus in Vienna, Herkulessaal in Munich, Tonhalle in Zurich, Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.
In 2005 Filidei received a commission from Comité de Lecture Ircam. He has received awards including the 2006 Salzburg Music Förderpreisträger, the 2007 Prix Takefu, the 2009 Siemens Förderpreisträger, the 2011 International Rostrum of Composers UNESCO Picasso-Miro Medal, the 2015 Abbiati Award, the 2016 Les Grands Prix Internationaux du Disque from the Académie Charles Cros for his album Forse, the Simone and Cino Del Duca Foundation’s 2018 Commande awarded by the Académie des Beaux-Arts.
In 2005 Filidei received a grant from the Akademie Schloss Solitude; in 2006 and 2007 he was a member of the Casa de Velàzquez; in 2012 he was a Pensionnaire at Villa Medici; he received a grant from the DAAD in Berlin. Filidei has also been composer-in-residence for numerous ensembles and music festivals.
Filidei is also active in teaching and has taught composition at the Royaumont Foundation’s Voix Nouvelles program, the University of Iowa, Takefu (Tokyo), the International Academy in Tchaikovsky City (Russia), Darmstädter Ferienkurse (Germany), and at numerous institutions and universities throughout the world (Ircam, Cnsmdp, Esmuc, Musikene, The conservatory of Strasbourg and Moskow, the university of Berlin, Hannover, Stuttgart, Graz, San Diego, Tokyo amongst many others). In 2019 he will give masterclasses with portrait concerts in Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong.
In 2016 he was named Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture.
Filidei joined the I Teatri Foundation of Reggio Emilia (Italy) as music consultant in 2018 and the Villa Medici in Rome as Artistic Director of the Controtempo festival of contemporary music.
Filidei’s first opera, Giordano Bruno, made its world premiere in 2015 in Porto (Portugal), and has been performed in theaters throughout Europe since then.
His latest opera, L’inondation, with book by Joel Pommerat, was composed for the 2019 season at Opéra Comique in Paris.

SARAH NEMTSOV, composer

Sarah Nemtsov was born in 1980 in Oldenburg and studied composition in Hanover and Berlin with Nigel Osborne, Johannes Schöllhorn and Walter Zimmermann, as well as oboe with Klaus Becker and Burkhard Glaetzner. She has received numerous awards and scholarships, including the Busoni Composition Prize of the Berlin Academy of the Arts, the Deutsche Musikautorenpreis of the GEMA and won the international RicordiLAB composition competition. She collaborates with renowned ensembles and orchestras (HR Symphony Orchestra, Deutsches Sinfonieorchester, RSO Vienna, WDR Orchestra, Ensemble Musikfabrik, Klangforum Wien, ensemble modern, ensemble mosaik, Ensemble Adapter, Nikel ensemble, Decoder ensemble, Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, ensemble recherche, Basel Sinfonietta, Finnish Baroque orchestra etc.) and her works are performed at internationally renowned festivals - such as the Donaueschinger Musiktage, Darmstadt Summer Course, Wien modern, ECLAT, Ultraschall, Holland Festival, Musica, Bregenz Festival, Munich Biennale, Ruhrtriennale and many more. Nemtsov's music captivates through sensitively sounded setups, through complex and energetic textures, musical stratifications, interactions between acoustic instruments and electronics, as well as collaboration with and references to other arts and other media. In 2014, Sarah Nemtsov taught composition at Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Cologne, in 2018 she taught composition at Haifa University as a DAAD guest lecturer. In 2021 she was tutor for composition at Darmstadt Summer Course. In 2020, she was nominated for the Opus Klassik Prize in the category "Composer of the Year". 2021 she was elected as a member of the Akademie der Künste (The Academy of Arts) Berlin as well as the Saxon Academy of the Arts. Since 2022, she is professor for composition at the University Mozarteum Salzburg, Austria. Her catalogue includes more than 150 compositions in almost all genres. Since 2016 her works are published by Ricordi. DIE ZEIT wrote about her opera SACRIFICE (premiered 2017 at the Opera House Halle): "Sound becomes space becomes time becomes reality". Her highly acclaimed opera „SACRIFICE“ (2016) – premiered in March 2017 at Opera Halle – was described by Die ZEIT as a work in which „sound becomes space becomes time becomes reality.“ In 2022, at festival Ruhrtriennale, her cycle „HAUS“ was staged at the turbine hall Bochum - „an unleashed ectasy of sound that opens up spaces of association“ (nmz). Her newest opera – „OPHELIA“ (2020-2021) with a libretto by Mirko Bonné – will be premiered in 2023 at Saarländisches Staatstheater. Currently Sarah Nemtsov works on her tetralogy „TZIMTZUM“ for four soloists and orchestra, as well as on another opera: „WE“ (after E. Zamyatin) for opera Dortmund, premiere in 2024.

EVA REITER, composer

YANN ROBIN, composer

In parallel to pursuing jazz studies at the CNR in Marseille, Yann Robin studied composition with Georges Bœuf then joined the class of Frédéric Durieux at the Conservatory of Paris (CNSMDP), studying analysis with Michaël Levinas before taking the Cursus Computer Science course at IRCAM. During these formative years his meeting with Jonathan Harvey would mark him deeply.

His music, powerful and voluminous, where pulsation and rhythm encounter moments of ecstasy, is released with great bouts of energy. By way of contrast, the timbre navigates between purity and impurity. The lure of low abyssal frequencies which he refers as «a world from below» brings him to Inferno, for large orchestra and electronics, and to the exploration of the infrasounds he uses here as an «underground dramaturgy». Since Monumenta, a piece for large orchestra with 95 musicians, he has been developing the concept of «negative harmony», allowing him to conduct mass and texture of great density with high precision and for the whole duration.

In 2009 and 2010, he was a fellow at the French Academy in Rome, the Villa Médicis, where he launched a new contemporary music festival, the Controtempo Festival.

He works in close collaboration with many soloists including Alain Billard, Nicolas Crosse, Éric-Maria Couturier and the Tana Quartet and also with conductors like Susanna Mälkki, Allan Gilbert, Jonathan Nott, Ludovic Morlot, Peter Rundel, and Leo Warynski…

In 2005, he co-founded the Multilateral Ensemble of which he is the artistic director.

His music is published by Editions Jobert.

CHRISTIAN SEBILLE, composer

Appointed as director of GMEM, the National Center for Musical Creation in Marseille (France), Christian Sebille is both a structure’s manager and a composer.

From 1983 onward, he devoted himself to electroacoustic music which he studied with Jean Schwartz and Philippe Prévost (Ircam), then from 1987 he devoted to mixed music at La Muse en Circuit (Alfortville, France) with Luc Ferrari.

In 1993 he founded Césaré in Reims (France) which became a National Center for Musical Creation in 1993 and whose artistic choices were focused on opening and meeting artistic disciplines and styles. Thus, it promotes research on diversity and new forms for (re)presentation of musical creation.

Christian Sebille’s catalog includes more than sixty vocal, instrumental, electroacoustic and mixed works, including a chamber opera (L’alleluiah – George Bataille – state comission), numerous plays dedicated to the theater or choreography (Jean Deloche, Nadège Mac Leay, Emmanuelle Huynh…) and a commission from Limoges’ opera for orchestra, choir, percussions, electric guitar and three voices. From 1999 to present, he has made a wide cycle of musical installations (series entitled Miniatures). The eleventh was commissioned by the city of Dijon and was particularly ambitious, as much as the thirteenth designed for the castle of If de Marseille.

Among his collaborations, the one with the spanish artist Francisco Ruiz De Infante gave rise to ten years of exchanges leading to a research on the relationship between plastic and sound space.

Christian Sebille develops electronic instruments that allows him to invest in the field of improvisation both in France and abroad (Alex Grillo, Didier Petit, Sylvain Kassap, Pablo Cueco, Philip Foch, Matt Bourne, Chris Sharkey, Christophe de Bezanac…)

JOHANNES MARIA STAUD, composer

Born in Innsbruck in 1974, the composer Johannes Maria Staud draws much of his inspiration from literature and the visual arts. Reflections on philosophical questions, social processes, and political events also influence his compositions.

He studied musicology and philosophy in Vienna before continuing his compositional studies with Hanspeter Kyburz in Berlin. In 2002 he won the Erste Bank Composition Prize; in 2003 he received the International Rostrum of Composers prize, followed by the Ernst von Siemens Composers’ Prize in 2004 and the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival’s Paul-Hindemith-Prize in 2009. Prestigious commissions followed. In 2004/05 Apeiron was commissioned by the Berlin Philharmonic under Sir Simon Rattle. In 2006 Segue for violoncello and orchestra was commissioned by Heinrich Schiff and the Vienna Philharmonic under Daniel Barenboim for the Salzburg Festival.

Major ensemble works of recent years include Auf die Stimme der weißen Kreide (Specter I-III), which premiered at the Festival Musica in Strasbourg in 2015, and the diptych Par ici – Par là, performed for the first time in full by the Ensemble Intercontemporain at the Acht Brücken festival in Cologne. The violin concerto Oskar (Towards a Brighter Hue II), written for Midori, premiered in 2014 at the Lucerne Festival, as did the opera Die Antilope based on a libretto by Durs Grünbein. Grünbein also provided the textual template for Der Riss durch den Tag (2011) and for the opera Die Weiden, which premiered in 2018 at the Vienna Staatsoper.

The composer’s most recent orchestral work, Stromab (“Downstream”), was premiered in 2017 by the Royal Danish Orchestra with its new chief conductor Alexander Vedernikov, with subsequent engagements in Vienna, Cleveland and New York. In 2018 the Vienna Philharmonic premiered Scattered Light without a conductor as part of the Vienna Modern’s season opening concert, followed by a guest performance in Berlin.

The 2019/20 season kicks off with the world premiere of Terra pinguis, a work for the Munich Chamber Orchestra. The current season also features new works for the Boulanger Trio (Kasseler Musiktage), a trio for the multi-percussionist Martin Grubinger (Vienna and Cologne), and a miniature for Rudolf Buchbinder on the Diabelli Variations.

Johannes Maria Staud is Professor of Composition at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg since autumn 2018.

ELISABETH GUTJAHR, lecturer

Elisabeth Gutjahr spent her childhood in Bonn and Geneva, two cosmopolitan cities that influenced her development.  After completing her studies in rhythm and music theory in Stuttgart and Cologne, at the age of 26 she was appointed as professor at the Trossingen State Academy of Music in Baden-Württemberg.  She was constantly concerned with the further development of the institution, in the senate, the university council, and from 2006 also as Rektorin, a function to which she was re-elected in 2012.  Moreover she has commitments in the conferences of university chancellors, in the regional music council (governing board), in the educational committee of the German Music Council (deputy chairperson), in the advisory committee on quality at the University of Gutenberg in Mainz, and since 2015 in the Council of the AEC.  She also holds further honorary positions on several boards and advisory committees, for example the Music Friends of Donaueschingen, the Zimmertheater Rottweil 2002 and the regio tv Ravensburg.
She is particularly preoccupied with the opposing poles of score and performance, libretto and stage, whereby she is interested in interdisciplinary processes that link music, theatre, dance, language, film and the fine arts with each other.  From an early age she focused her artistic activity on the creation of text in context with music.  Elisabeth Gutjahr has also organized competitions and festivals of contemporary music  and has worked as a music dramaturge, choreographer and stage director.

Since 1989 she has written several opera libretti and texts for music.  She wrote Gesualdo for the composer Franz Hummel (for the opening of the new opera house in Kaiserslautern), the text for the chamber opera On the Beautiful Blue Danube (voted Best Opera of the Year 1994 by the journal Opernwelt), Beuys (co-production between the Vienna Festival and the Deutsche Oper am Rhein Dusseldorf) and Styx (libretto about Handel and the Orpheus myth for the Handel Festival 1999/2000).
For the composer Tobias P. M. Schneid she wrote Swin swin, a chamber opera that was also produced for television and broadcast in 1998 on ARTE. She wrote the libretto for the opera Eclipse by József Sári (premiered in 2009 at Budapest Opera). In 2015, together with Henry Fourès, she produced the bilingual music radio play Correspondances in the studio La mise en circuit in Paris for the Musica Viva Festival in Strasbourg.

Elisabeth Gutjahr has written several artistic and music-educational articles such as Der Mythos Kreativität (Verlag Wissenschaft und Bildung, Berlin, 1996) as well as essays on music and concert educational theory, music education, improvisation and creative processes.  She has written several radio plays and also the cycle of poems Tractatus logico-poeticus, to which the award-winning audio book Wittgenstein with Klaus Löwitsch refers (commission and cooperation).

VALÉRIE PHILIPPIN, singer

Valérie Philippin is a French vocalist, performer, and composer whose work explores the voice in all its dimensions — sung, spoken, extended techniques, improvisation — and its intimate connection with the body, space, and text. She is recognized for her singular approach to vocal performance, at the crossroads of contemporary music, experimental practices, and theatricality.

She collaborates with numerous composers and ensembles, premiering many works and creating original solo performances that blend music, poetry, and sound exploration. Her artistic projects often reflect a desire to question and expand the role of the voice in today’s music, while opening new paths for interpretation and creation.

A passionate and generous educator, Valérie Philippin teaches at the Bordeaux Conservatoire and regularly leads masterclasses and workshops throughout Europe, aimed at singers, composers, and performers from diverse backgrounds. Her teaching emphasizes the creative process, body awareness, improvisation, and the search for personal vocal expression.

Also active as a composer and author of vocal works, she develops projects that link sound, text, and gesture, in close dialogue with contemporary poetic and musical languages. Her artistic journey is driven by curiosity, experimentation, and the transmission of an open, inventive, and liberated vision of the voice.

MATTEO CESARI, flutist

ALAIN BILLARD, clarinetist

Born in 1971, Alain Billard began playing the clarinet at the age of five with Nino Chiarelli at the Chartres music school. He went on to study with Richard Vieille at the Conservatoire National de Région de Paris (CNR) and then at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Lyon, graduating with a Diplôme d'Etudes Supérieures in Jacques Di Donato's class.

An internationally acclaimed soloist, he has collaborated with many composers from the 20th century to the present day, including Pierre Boulez, Luciano Berio, György Ligeti, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Philippe Manoury, Michael Jarrell, Pascal Dusapin, Bruno Mantovani and Yann Robin.
A regular guest soloist with major national and international orchestras, he has premiered and recorded numerous works, including Machine for Contacting the Dead (2001) by Lisa Lim, Génération (2002), a triple concerto for three clarinets by Jean-Louis Agobet, Mit Ausdruck (2003), a concerto for bass clarinet and orchestra by Bruno Mantovani, Art of Metal I, II, III (2007-2008) for contrabass clarinet, ensemble and electronics by Yann Robin, and more.

Alain Billard is very active in the field of research and development of new instrumental techniques. He collaborates regularly with Ircam and Selmer.

His work as a clarinet and bass clarinet teacher at the ESMD in Lille and the CNSMDP in Paris, and as a lecturer at numerous composition academies for future music professionals, testify to his deep commitment to the transmission of musical knowledge in all its forms.

PIETER JANSEN, violinist

Pieter Jansen began violin classes at the age of 7 with Koen Rens at the Academy of Music of Turnhout. He continued his studies at the Royal Conservatory of Antwerp under Guido De Neve. He was conferred with a Master’s degree summa cum laude. In January 2006, he was awarded the ‘Oranjebeurs’ scholarship.
He continued his studies with violinists such as Charles-André Linale, Raphael Oleg, Albrecht Breuninger and Renaud Capuçon. 

As an orchestra musician, Pieter is concertmaster of Boho Strings and as a solo violin/leader Pieter is also sought after by the Symphonic Orchestra of La Monnaie Théâtre, Belgian National Orchestra and Le Concert Olympique. 

Pieter specialised in chamber music with the Artemis Quartet at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel and has participated in masterclasses with the Artis Quartet, the Skampa Quartet, Heine Müller, Ralf Gothoni and Andras Keller. 
He’s a laureate of several chamber music competitions including Gouden Vleugels (2009) and Supernova (2014). He was a member of ARSIS4 and Tana Quartet and now plays with Trio Khaldei and I Justiniani. 

Pieter has a great passion for contemporary music. He has been violin solo of SPECTRA, since 2006 and of Ensemble Multilatérale since 2016. He is also regularly invited by Hermes, Ictus and Notabu. 
In may 2023, he was appointed co-artistic director of SPECTRA. 

Pieter crossed Europe, Asia, North - and South-America and Australia for concerts at festivals and halls such as: Musica Strasbourg, World Music Days in Sydney, the Traiettorie Festival in Parma, the festivals of Aix-en Provence and Avignon, Wigmore Hall in London, the Louvre Auditorium in Paris, the Venice Biennial, the Donostia Festival in San Sebastian, the Ravello Festival in Naples, Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires,... 

Pieter is chamber music professor and coördinator at KASK & CONSERVATORIUM of the School of Arts Ghent. 

PABLO TOGNAN, cellist

Born into a family of musicians with a wide range of influences, Pablo's musical path reflects this diversity, leading him to take an interest in contrasting musical forms.

A graduate of the CNSMDP in cello (2008) and string quartet (2010), Pablo studied with Jean-Marie Gamard. He had previously won a prize at the CRR in Toulouse in Annie Cochet's class (2001), then at the ENM in Aulnay-sous-bois under Philippe Mûller (2003).
Her desire to broaden her musical horizons as much as possible has led her to perform with string quartets (Quatuor Tercea from 2010 to 2017) in order to explore the major repertoire, as well as with symphony orchestras (Orchestre National de Lille, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Lamoureux, etc.).

As a member of the Frivolités Parisiennes company, he helps to rediscover the vast repertoire of French Operetta. For two years (2008-2010), he was principal cellist with the Conservatoire's Orchestre des Lauréats. He performs regularly at the Marciac Festival, alongside musicians such as Richard Galliano, Baptiste Trotignon and Stacey
Stacey Kent.

His love of harmony, which he developed in particular with Bernard de Crépy at the Paris Conservatoire, enables him to write arrangements in both the classical and jazz worlds, with a particular interest in Brazilian music.

His work as a performer explores the cello’s extended techniques, the relationship between acoustic and electronic sound, and the physical dimension of musical gesture. Pablo Tognan is particularly interested in projects combining improvisation, collective creation, and new performance formats.

A dedicated pedagogue, he leads workshops and masterclasses focusing on contemporary cello practice, ensemble playing, and improvisation. His artistic vision is grounded in curiosity, freedom of expression, and the desire to explore new relationships between sound, body, and space.