Michael Mattäus Schwarze, baritone

Claudia Fernandez Parrondo, piano

Switzerland / Spain

Michael Schwarz

(Born 1991) Coming from a family of musicians, Michael Matthäus Schwarze decided to learn to play the trumpet at the age of 11. Up to the age of 20 he played the trumpet in various ensembles and youth orchestras in Lucerne and Zug. He received his first singing lessons at the age of 19 from Barbara Zinniker at the Zug Music School. Soon he discovered his special love for the German song. After high school, he decided to study Protestant theology in Bern, which he completed with a bachelor's degree in 2017. Parallel to his studies, he received singing lessons from René Perler in Friborg, and in 2017 he was accepted into the singing class of Prof. Marcel Boone at the Hochschule für Musik in
Basel and completed his bachelor's degree this summer. Starting this autumn, Schwarze will study singing education at the ZHdK with Scot Weir. In last year's in-house opera production Don Giovanni he was seen in the role of Leporello. At the ZHdK he is playing the role of Nardo in this year's opera project La Finta Giardiniera. The song and the oratorio are very important to Michael Matthäus Schwarze. Master classes with Kurt Widmer are a valuable source of inspiration for him.

Claudia Fernandez Parrondo

She was born in 1997 in Manzanares (Spain). Between 2005 and 2015, she studied at the Conservatory of Albacete with pianists Belén Selva and Pedro Alonso Martínez. She graduated with honours in Albacete’s Conservatory. She obtained an Extraordinary Prize of Artistic Studies, the first prize in the 9th Quintanar del Rey competition and the third prize in the 13th “Diputación de Albacete” competition. Subsequently, she studied Bachelor’s Degree in “Conservatorio Superior de Música de Aragón” with professor Miguel Ángel Ortega Chavaldas, finishing in June of 2019 with first class honours and with the best student record of her class. She has participated in several national and international courses, such as Curso Pirineos Classic, Curso Improvisa-Salamanca, Curso para jóvenes músicos Santa María del Paular or Aurora Music Festival 2018. As a soloist, she played, in 2018, in “Patio de la Infanta” of Zaragoza, in 2019, in Huesca’s Provincial Council’s auditorium and, in 2020, in Schaffhausen “Rathauslaube”. Furthermore, she was one of the finalists of the competition of the festival “Piano Meeting 2019”. In the field of chamber music she has performed in Luis Galve Hall of Zaragoza ́s Auditorium, Patio de la Infanta and CAI Luzán’s Hall of this same city and in Juan
March Foundation’s Hall in Madrid. Nowadays, she continues studying a Master in piano performance in Basel’s Hochschule für Musik with Professor Tobias Schabenberger.

Janina Staub, soprano

Yao Hou, piano

Germany-Great Britain / China

Janina Staub

The German, Northern Irish soprano Janina Staub (born 1994) is currently a member of the opera studio in Freiburg and at the same time is taking the concert exam with Prof. Mareike Morr at the Freiburg University of Music. Before that, she completed her Bachelor's and Master's degrees at the Hanns Eisler University of Music in Berlin. Janina Staub gained stage experience as Barbarina at the Freiburg Theater in 2020, as a sandman at the Weikersheim Palace Opera, as a soprano soloist in the education project of the Potsdam Chamber Academy and as a soprano in the contemporary chamber opera "Die Voiceless" at the Deutsche Oper. 2021 it will be on
Theater Freiburg appear as Second Woman / Spirit in Dido and Aeneas, as Quartilla and Criside in Madernas Satyricon and Gretchen in the jukebox opera. Janina Staub performed in the oratorio "Elias" and in the "Mozart Requiem" 2019 in the Philharmonie Berlin under
conducted by Jörg-Peter Weigle and the Brandenburg State Orchestra. In October 2021 she will perform Beethoven's 9th Symphony with the Brandenburg Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Peter Gülke / Alexander Lebek at the Philharmonie Berlin. In 2018 she was heard in cooperation with the Heidelberger Frühling in the reconstruction of the Brahms Requiem in Heidelberg. In 2016 she was a representative at a commemorative event of the First World War and made music with the Hallé Orchestra. She received important song impulses from Wolfram Rieger, Matthias Alteheld, Graham Johnson, Julius Drake and Anne Le Bozec.

Yao Hou

Yao Hou was born in Sichuan (China) in 1995 and began playing the piano at the age of five. She first attended the local music high school and later began her studies at the Sichuan University of Music. From 2014-2020 she studied piano at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg with Prof. Pi-hsien Chen and Prof. Hardy Rittner, where she completed her master's degree.
Since 2020 she has been studying song design with Prof. Matthias Alteheld. She received important impulses from master classes with Hans-Peter and Volker Stenzl, Till Fellner, Alfonso Gomez, Klaus Bässler, Georg Sava, Jerome Rose and Hansjacob Staemmler.