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Konstantinos Arvanitakis
(stage direction)

Konstantinos Arvanitakis is a graduate of the Athens Conservatoire (Flute), the Drama School of the National Theatre of Greece (Acting), Athens University (Classics), and the University of California at Irvine (MFA in Stage Directing). Right after the completion of his studies he received a fellowship to train as artistic director at the Arizona Theatre Company. He has directed over 50 productions on all the prominent stages of Greece. He has taught at the Department of Theatre Studies of the Athens University and the University of Peloponnese, and has served as President of the Hellenic Centre of the International Theatre Institute. Under his leadership, the Athens Conservatoire Drama School has become one of the most prestigious institutions in Greece.

 

Sergey Okunev
(stage direction)

Sergey Okunev graduated from the acting department of the Theater Institute in Yekaterinburg. After he studied at the directing department of GITIS in Moscow. Works at the Ermolova Theater in Moscow as an actor and director. Curator of the laboratory of theatrical art In the season 2020/2021. Director of the performances "Ripe Me" and "Look Back in Anger".
Member of the Russian Director's Laboratories.
Since 2020, a teacher at the Russian Institute of Theater Arts GITIS.

 

Stephen Delaney
(musical director)

 

 

 

 

 

 

photo: Sandra Then

Stephen Delaney, solo and collaborative pianist, conductor, coach, and dedicated educator was born in Sydney, Australia. He has performed at the Musikverein Wien and Wiener Konzerthaus, at the National Concert Hall in Dublin and has appeared at numerous international music festivals, including the Banff Chamber Music Festival, Wien Modern, the Haydn Festival in Eisenstadt and the Maifestspiele in Wiesbaden. He has also performed for the Austrian Cultural Forum in Istanbul and Teheran. 
As collaborative pianist, Stephen Delaney has performed numerous recitals with many distinguished artists, including Gundula Janowitz, Brigid Steinberger, Ramón Vargas, and Max Emanuel Cencic. His longstanding association with Gundula Janowitz, where he was her pianist for international masterclasses across Europe, has taken a special place in his development as a passionate pianist for art song, and he himself has held masterclasses for art song across Europe, Asia and Australia. His recording of Die schöne Müllerin with Erwin Belakowitsch in 2011 was received with great acclaim, by critics and public alike. 
Until 2015, Stephen Delaney was a faculty member at the mdw, the University for Music and Performing Arts Vienna and from 2015 to 2020, he was director of OperAvenir, Theater Basel’s opera studio. During this time, he was musical director for many highly successful productions including The Cricket Recovers by Richard Ayres, Der Teufel mit den drei goldenen Haaren by Stefan Johannes Hanke, Romeo und Julia by Boris Blacher, Trouble in Tahiti by Leonard Bernstein, Der Kaiser von Atlantis by Viktor Ullmann and for world premieres of The Goldbug by Dai Fujikura and Schellen-Ursli, a family opera with libretto and music by Marius Felix Lange. He was also assistant conductor for two further productions at Theater Basel; for the world premiere of the box office hit, Andersen’s Erzählungen, music by Jherek Bischoff and libretto by Jan Dvořak, and for Le vin Herbé by Frank Martin. In collaboration with the Sinfonieorchester Basel, the Basel Sinfonietta and the Paul Sacher Stiftung, he initiated and established the popular concert series Sachers musikalische Wunderkammer at Theater Basel.
Since 2020, Stephen Delaney is on the faculty at the mdw, the University for Music and Performing Arts Vienna and is responsible for special projects.

 

Regula Baenziger
(voice coach)

Regula Baenziger studied at the „Conservatorio Niccolò Paganini“ in Genova with Gabriella Ravazzi, after her diploma with Wally Staempfli at the Music Academy Basel. She took part in a series of masterclasses near celebrated personalities, such as Giovanna Canetti, Carmen Vilalta, Vera Bertinetti and Beppe di Tomasi and has been a winner at the international competition „Le nozze di Figaro“ in Italy. She sang leading parts like Cherubino in „Le nozze di Figaro“, Dorabella in „Così fan tutte“ and Santuzza in „Cavalleria Rusticana“. For a long time she seriously occupied herself with the Lied. Accompanied by the greek pianist Evangelos Sarafianos she sang numerous recitals, amongst others in Patras and Rhodos. While performing and continuing her own vocal enhancement, she early founded her own singing class in Basel (Switzerland). In 2019 she was member of the production team for the contemporary opera Schellenursli at the Basel Theater.  

 

Arsenis Selalmazidis
(violin)

Arsenis Selalmazidis was born in Russia in 1990 and grew up in Greece. He studied violin with his father Igor Selalmazidis at the Patras Municipal Conservatory, later in the class of Prof. Zakhar Bron at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln. He also studied composition/music theory there with Prof. Johannes Schild. 
Arsenis Selalmazidis has won prizes at internationally renowned competitions, such as the "Karol Lipinski & Henryk Wieniawski" Competition in Lublin, the Boris Goldstein Violin Competition Bern and the Concorso Internazionale di Violino "Premio Rodolfo Lipizer" in Italy. He was also a scholarship holder of the Live Music Now organisation founded by Yehudi Menuhin. Important solo performances led him with the Zakhar Bron Chambers, the State Orchestra of Thessaloniki as well as the State Orchestra of Athens to the Kölner Philharmonie and the 'Megaron' in Athens, among others.
In addition to performing as a soloist and chamber musician, Arsenis Selalmazidis is an assistant in Prof. Zakhar Bron's class in Switzerland and gave his own masterclass in Novosibirsk, Russia in 2017. In 2019-2021 he was concertmaster of the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn and currently holds the same position with the Philharmonic State Orchestra Hamburg.

 

Denis Walter Olejak
(piano)

Denis Walter Olejak studied piano, music theory and instrumental pedagogy with Prof. Josef Anton Scherrer and Prof. Johannes Schild at the Cologne University of Music and Dance. He is currently studying master piano solo with Prof. Sheila Arnold, also in Cologne. He receives further impulses from Andreas Staier, Bernd Goetzke, Manfred Aust and Bart van Oort, among others.
He has won prizes in competitions for piano, chamber music and music theory. He was given the title of "Primus of the City of Rybnik" (Poland). Together with his piano duo partner Chikako Miyado, he received a scholarship from the Werner Richard - Dr. Carl Dörken Foundation and included in the “Best of North Rhine- Westphalia” program.
As a soloist, chamber music and lied duo partner, he enters the stages in Germany, France, Italy and Poland. He recorded for various television and radio productions. His compositions include the four-part triple fugue for piano solo »Fuga fracta« (published by Eichen Musikverlag in 2018), »Aus Goethe's Faust« for mixed choir and piano - a commission from the Choir Academy at the Konzerthaus Dortmund (2019, published in the »Beethoven Choir Book«), as well as several arrangements of various works for piano four hands.

 

Evangelos Sarafianos
(piano)

Evangelos Sarafianos is a pianist of Greek origin, born in Cairo. He studied piano at the Athens Conservatory with Professor George Arvanitakis and later on with Peter Efler at the Musical Academy of Basel where he graduated in 1987 with the highest grade, the  “Solisten-Diplom”. Between 1987-1991 he concentrated on historical instruments including the hammerklavier, cembalo and clavichord.  He studied with Jean Goverts at the “Schola Cantorum Basiliensis” and Christine Sartoretti at the Conservatoire de Lausanne where he earned a diploma in Cembalo. He won the Bachauer Competition in Greece, the Swiss National Competition, PIANO 80, in Winterthur and subsequently he was awarded the most prestigious scholarship of Greece, by the Alexander S. Onassis Foundation.
Mr. Sarafianos’ activities range over various artistic fields including concerts in Europe, Canada and Egypt. Since 1999 he performs almost every year in Japan where he  gave masterclasses (as in Showa University) as well as in Greece and  Canada.
His  repertoire extends from the Baroque to the present and includes works of the most challenging difficulties, such as  Rachmaninoff’s 3rd concerto for piano in d-Minor, as well as the most strict stylistic pieces,  such as Bach’s Concertos.
He currently holds a post at the Conservatory of Zurich as well as at the Musikschule der Musik-Akademie in Basel. 

 

Johannes Schild
(piano)

Johannes Schild studied composition, music theory, piano and conducting at the Music Academies of Detmold and Wuerzburg. He composed pieces for piano, organ, voices and orchestra, music for film and stage and orchestral arrangements of popular and classical music. Notable compositions in the recent past were Fresko for organ (2009 cologne cathedral), Metávasi – Three symphonic sketches (2011 auditorium university cologne), Sternherz – Christmas opera (2013 aesch/switzerland), Ti ine i agápi – Cantata on words by Nikos Kazantzakis (2017 arnados/tinos, greece).
Johannes Schild is professor of theory and composition at the Cologne University of Music and Dance and at the Zurich University of the Arts. He is the author of several publications in the fields of theory and musicology. A monograph on the symphonies of Johannes Brahms will be published in September 2022. As a composer, he has written works for a wide variety of instrumentations, including music for film and stage as well as orchestral arrangements of popular and classical music. He has also been and continues to be a piano accompanist at international singing courses and a conductor in concerts and musical productions with various orchestras, including the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra, Bulgarian Symphony Orchestra Sofia, Shanghai Opera Orchestra and Hofer Symphony Orchestra..

 

 


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