Pierre Fontenelle, former cello-soloist of the Opéra Royal de Wallonie-Liège and Namurois of the Year 2020, is a young Belgian musician with an atypical career as a soloist, chamber musician and orchestral musician in Belgium and abroad. 1st Prize of the 2022 Breughel Competition, he also won the Audience Prize and the Prize for Best Performance. At the Edmond Baert International Cello Competition 2019, he received the 1st Prize and the Feldbusch Prize, and was awarded the 2nd Prize “Van Hecke” at the Belgium Cello Society International Competition.

Jorge Giménez (Palma de Mallorca, 2001) began his cello studies at the age of four. From 2011 until 2019 he has been a student of Maria de Macedo in Madrid. He studied a bachelor’s degree in Violoncello Performance at the Conservatorio Superior de Música de las Islas Baleares, Spain, with Prof. Emmanuel Bleuse. He graduated in June 2019 and received the Extraordinary End of Degree Award.

Born in 2000, João Pedro Gonçalves started playing the cello at the age of 12 with Ana Cláudia Serrão as his mentor, in Lisbon, continuing later with Marco Pereira and Paulo Gaio Lima.

In recent years, he has had the opportunity to work with several professors, such as Daniel Muller-Schott, Gary Hoffman, Jakob Koranyi, Kyril Zlotnikov, Marc Coppey, Maria de Macedo and Alain Gervreau (baroque cello). He has also had the chance to work with many of the world’s leading conductors, including Lorenzo Viotti, Gustavo Dudamel and Giancarlo Guerrero.

Ana Hespanha (Lisbon, 1996) began studying the cello at the age of eleven in “Orquestra Geração”, a Portuguese project based on the “El Sistema” model.

She completed her Bachelor’s degree in Academia Nacional Superior de Orquestra with Paulo Gaio Lima and a Master in Performance in Koninklijk Conservatorium Brussel with Jeroen Reuling.

Agata Jonczak, a gifted cellist from Kraków, began her musical journey at a young age and has since developed into an accomplished artist. In 2021, she graduated with honors from the Grażyna and Kiejstut Bacewicz Academy of Music in Łódź, where she studied under Wojciech Fudala. She continued to refine her skills at the Royal… Read more »

Julia Kotarba, soloist, chamber and orchestral musician, has been acclaimed for her solo and chamber music activities. She is the founder and member of the Karski Quartet, which has rapidly gained recognition on the international music scene, and performs in many international venues.

Natalia Kotarba is a Polish violinist born in Krakow and currently based in Brussels. She is one of the founders of the Karski Quartet. Natalia holds a Master Cum Laude from the Academy of Music in Krakow, the Royal Northern College of Music, and the Royal Conservatory in Brussels, where she pursued her Artist Diploma under the guidance of Philippe Graffin. From 2019 to 2022, she continued her training as a string quartet artist-in-residence at the Chapelle Musicale Reine Elisabeth in Belgium, receiving the artist diploma and remaining as an associated artist.

Born in 2012 in Belgium, Georgia began her musical journey at the age of 3 and a half, learning to play the violin using the Suzuki method. Since 2017, she has had the opportunity to work with Erik Sluys in his talent class. From the age of 6, she demonstrated her musical talent by participating… Read more »

A violinist, he began his violin studies at the age of seven at the Benet Bails Municipal Music School with Judith Ortega, before moving on to the Conservatorio Municipal de Música de Barcelona, where he was taught by Alberto Reguera until 2022. He is currently studying at the Koninklijk Conservatorium Brussel (KCB) with violinist Yossif… Read more »

Louis was born in Namur in 1994. He began studying the violin at the age of 5 at the Balthazar Florence Conservatory with Cécile Delvingt. Later, he joined the “Young Talents” section at IMEP (Institut supérieur de Musique et Pédagogie). There, he pursued his bachelor’s degree with Igor Tkatchouk and his master’s degree with Marc Danel. Concurrently, he studied law for a few years at the University of Namur.