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Sae Yoon Chon won First Prize at the 2018 Dublin International Piano Competition and has been a major prizewinner at international piano competitions in Hong Kong, Valencia, Los Angeles, and Seoul, in addition to the Hilton Head International Piano Competition and Young Concert Artists. He first studied piano in his native South Korea with Hyoung-Joon Chang and later received his Bachelor of Music and Artist Diploma at the Glenn Gould School of the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, studying with John O’Conor. He is now continuing his master’s degree at The Juilliard School (New York) with Robert McDonald. Sae Yoon made his New York debut at Carnegie Hall and has given solo recitals at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, Seoul Arts Center in Seoul, and many others. Sae Yoon has performed with the Cleveland, Hong Kong and Valencia Orchestras, Dublin’s National Symphony Orchestra, and has worked with conductors Jahja Ling, Tania Miller, Bruno Aprea, John Morris Russell, Young-Min Park, Andrew Mogrelia, Erzhan Dautov, Ja Kyung Year and Denis Mastromonaco.
French-Canadian baritone Olivier Bergeron completed his studies at the École Normale de Musique de Paris in 2017. The same year, he sang the title role in La morte d’Orfeo at the Festival de Royaumont under Christophe Rousset. He made his professional debut the following season in Dido and Aeneas with Les Talens Lyriques at the Festival de musique de Menton. Recent performances include Il mondo alla roversa at the Opéra Grand Avignon, Opéra de Reims and the Philharmonie de Paris, Die stumme Serenade with Opera Fuoco and Les Pêcheurs de perles at the Festival d’Opéra de Québec. In recital, he made his debut at the Wigmore Hall and at Salle Cortot during the 2019/2020 season after taking part in the French Song Exchange under the tutelage of François Le Roux and Dame Felicity Lott. Olivier’s projects include a recital at the Petit Palais in Paris and a residency around Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin at the Musée d’art de Joliette, in Quebec. He receives generous support from the Jeunesses Musicales Canada Foundation and the Art Song Foundation of Canada.
Eira Huse’s first singing experience was as a member of the Norwegian Opera Children’s Choir. She has performed at several festivals such as the Oxford Lieder Festival, Kammeroper Schloss-Rheinsberg and Oslo Grieg Festival, among others: A Shepherd/Cat/Squirrel at L’Opéra de Lyon/ROH Muscat, 2nd Woman/2nd Witch (Dido and Aeneas) at the Norwegian Opera and Lady Capulet (Romeo and Juliet by B. Blacher) at the Studio de l’Opéra de Lyon. She has sung with musicians such as Henning Kraggerud and conductors including Titus Engel, Oliver John-Ruthven, Clemens Flick, Nicholas Kok and Emmanuelle Calef. She has also worked with directors Georg Quander, Jean de Lacornerie, Andreas Heise and James Bonas. Upcoming engagements include the role of Dido (Dido and Aeneas) at Ramme Gård. Huse composed and performed the chamber opera ‘Scenes from a Beehive’ about the global disappearance of bees.
Tenor Michael Bell had his first national competitive success when, in 2013, he won Ireland’s Catherine Judge Memorial Prize. He went on to read Music at Cambridge whilst singing with the world-famous Choir of St. John’s College with whom he toured and recorded extensively, most memorably as the Tenor soloist for the Choir’s recording of Janáček’s Otčenás, a performance described as “heroic” in a review by Nicholas Kerrison. Concurrent with his work with the Choir he appeared on the opera stage in roles as varied as Candide, Ferrando, Lysander and Tom Rakewell. In the sphere of contemporary opera he has recorded sketches of Gareth Glyn’s opera Wythnos yng Chymru Fydd for Welsh television channel S4C and created the roles of Gabelkhover and the Schoolmaster in Tim Watts’ Kepler’s Trial at its premiere at the V & A Museum in November 2017. Equally at home as a recitalist, he was a Scholar on Pembroke College Cambridge’s Lieder Scheme for the academic year 2017/2018 and was a prizewinner at the Camerata Ireland Academy in August 2018. He began studies with Russell Smythe at the Royal College of Music in September 2018 as a Big Give Scholar. He is an alumnus of the 2019 Verbier Festival Academy.
A recent graduate of the Opera Course at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and recipient of a number of major awards, British bass William Thomas is fast making a name for himself as one of today’s most promising young singers. As a Jerwood Young Artist he sang the role of Nicholas in the British premiere of Samuel Barber’s Vanessa at the Glyndebourne Festival, he has sung Shepherd Pelléas et Mélisande for Garsington Opera and he made his debut at the Vienna State Opera as Snug in a new production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Other recent engagements have included Zweiter Priester/Zweiter Geharnischter Die Zauberflöte for Glyndebourne and Colline La bohème at Alexandra Palace for the English National Opera.
Hailed by critics as a ‘thinking’ musician with engaging stage presence and a gratifying combination of virtuosity and eloquence, pianist Pedja Muzijevic has defined his career with creative programming, unusual combinations of new and old music, and lasting collaborations with other artists and ensembles. The Financial Times sums him up as “a virtuoso with formidable fingers and a musician with fiercely original ideas about the music he plays.” His vision is to bring musicians together to explore new ways of presenting classical and contemporary music to audiences through curation, staging, lighting and other technology. In addition to a busy touring schedule, Muzijevic is Director of Music Programming at the Baryshnikov Center in New York and Artistic Advisor at Montana’s Tippet Rise.
Welsh Tenor, Dafydd Jones, made his international debut in 2022/23 season as Clotarco in Haydn’s Armida for the Bregenzer Festspiele. Busy making a name for himself on the operatic stage, he also recently made his debut in the Title Role of Albert Herring for Opera North. Other operatic roles include Earl Tolloller (cover) in Iolanthe for English National Opera, Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni (OPRA Cymru) and Pastore in L’Orfeo (Garsington Opera). Recently, Dafydd won the Ferrier Loveday Song Prize in the Kathleen Ferrier Competition at the Wigmore Hall and was awarded the Prix Thierry Mermod on the 2019 Atelier Lyrique at the Verbier Festival. He was member of the 2023 Wigmore Hall French Song Exchange programme where he worked with Dame Felicity Lott and François Le Roux. Dafydd’s just completed his first year at the Royal College of Music International Opera Studio where he studies with Nicky Spence and Caroline Dowdle.
South Korean baritone Edward Kim is currently pursuing his Master of Performance in Royal College of Music with Professor Janis Kelly. He made his operatic debut as Conte in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro at the Berlin Opera Academy in 2019. Equally at home with Oratorio and art song, Edward has sung solos in Mozart’s Requiem and Beethoven’s 9th Symphony and was also selected to participate in a recital of Schumann’s Myrthen by Roger Vignoles. He has had success in several competitions, clinching the top prizes in Seoul Music Competition, Osaka International Music Competition, Estonia International Competition and Concert Artists International Competition in New York. Edward is supported by the Sheila Saam Memorial and Drake Calleja Trust.
The French cellist Edgar Moreau, who turned 21 in 2015, can already look back on a number of exceptional achievements, among them becoming the winner – at the age of just 17 – of the Second Prize in Russia’s formidable Tchaikovsky Competition, winning the Young Soloist Prize in the 2009 Rostropovich Cello Competition in Paris, and performing with such distinguished musicians as Valery Gergiev, Gidon Kremer, András Schiff, Yuri Bashmet, Krzysztof Penderecki, Gustavo Dudamel, Renaud Capuçon, Nicholas Angelich, Frank Braley, Khatia Buniatishvili, Gérard Caussé and the Talich Quartet. In 2013 his huge potential was highlighted by France’s top music awards, Les Victoires de la Musique, which named him the year’s ‘Révélation’ among young classical instrumentalists.
He released his debut album in March 2014 on Erato with pianist Pierre-Yves Hodique: Play is a collection of short pieces and brilliant encores from Popper, Paganini, Chopin, Saint-Saëns, Fauré, Dvořák, Massenet, Schubert, Poulenc and Tchaikovsky among others. His follow-up album, Giovincello, presents 18th-century cello concertos recorded with the Italian Baroque ensemble Il Pomo d’Oro.
A Parisian by birth, Edgar Moreau first realised he wanted to play the cello when he was just four years old – the instrument caught his imagination when he saw a girl having a cello lesson in an antique shop he was visiting with his father. He began lessons soon afterwards, and was giving concerts with major orchestras by the time he was 11 years old. Since the age of 13 he has been a student at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris. He has participated in masterclasses given by such cellists as Lynn Harrell, Anner Bylsma, Miklós Perényi, Gary Hoffman and David Geringas, and since October 2013 has been attending the Kronberg Academy near Frankfurt – home to the Emanuel Feuermann Conservatory, named after the legendary Ukrainian-born cellist.
When the editor of the international music website Bachtrack saw Edgar Moreau perform in Gstaad in early 2013, he had the following to say: “One always comes to a young musician’s concert with a hope that this will be that special day when you hear a performer who you are absolutely sure will be a star of the future. That hope only comes to fruition on a small number of occasions: this concert was one of them. I’m willing to take bets that nineteen year-old Parisian cellist Edgar Moreau is going to have a glittering career … His playing is muscular and he throws himself into the music … and Moreau has bags of stage presence, with a flexible face which can turn from smile to grimace and back in an instant but always shows deep involvement with the music … Even at such a young age, Moreau can completely win over an audience with his big sound and no-holds-barred style. I think he’s going to be a winner.”