Daniel Beilschmidt
Biography Daniel Beilschmidt
Daniel Beilschmidt
was born in Zeulenroda in Thuringia, Germany in 1978. After getting first piano lessons at the age of 13 he attended the music-classes in Goethe-Gymnasium in Gera. From 2000 to 2006 he studied Organ at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Leipzig with Stefan Johannes Bleicher, Arvid Gast, Ullrich Böhme (Organist of St.Thomas) and Volker Bräutigam (Improvisation). 2003 he went for one year to Copenhagen to study with Hans Fagius. After his Diploma in 2006 he inscribed in the Hochschule für Musik in Weimar to conclude his organ studies with the “Konzertexamen” in 2008 with Michael Kapsner and Bernhard Klapprott (Early music). In 2002 Daniel Beilschmidt won the first price of a scholarship of the "Hans-und-Eugenia-Jütting-Stiftung Stendal". He has succesfully taken part in several competitions: in 2008 he was Ritter-Prize-winner of the "International August-Gottfried-Ritter-Competition Magdeburg/Germany" as well as he took the fourth place of the "International Bach Competition Leipzig". In 2009 Daniel Beilschmidt was assigned as University Organist in Leipzig as well as assistant organist at St.Thomas. As well as in Germany he has played concerts in Scandinavia, Ucraine and Mexico. He collaborates regularly with the Thomanerchor and the Gewandhaus Orchester and has played at the Bachfest Leipzig and the Movimento Festival Wolfsburg, a.o. with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra and the oboist Ramon Ortega Quero. He is teaching organ and improvisation at the "Thomasschule" and the Academy for Church Music in Halle.
Christine Mothes
studied singing and recorder at the Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy University of Music and Theater in Leipzig as well as at the Escola Superior de Musica de Catalunya in Barcelona. She then continued her studies in singing with Gundula Anders and Marek Rzepka in Leipzig, focusing on early music and historical performance. Numerous master classes and further courses in the performance of medieval music with Pedro Memelsdorff, Benjamin Bagby, Kees Boeke, Jill Feldman, Pierre Hamon, Marc Lewon and Uri Smilansky rounded out her training. Together with the ensemble Metro Marina, Christine Mothes won the early music sponsorship prize of the Saarland Broadcasting Company and the Fritz Neumeyer Academy in 2009. Christine Mothes has performed at numerous music festivals in Germany and abroad together with, among others, Benjamin Bagby (Sequentia), Helmut Rilling (Internationale Bachakademie Stuttgart), Reinhard Göbel, Michael Schönheit (Merseburger Hofmusik). As a singer and co-founder of La Mouvance, she has focused on the music of the 12th–15th century.
Veit Heller
finished his studies in 1994 at the University of Leipzig with a thesis about the Die Glocken und Geläute des Nicolaus Jonas Sorber (“Bells and Chimes of Nicolaus Jonas Sorber,” Frankfurt / M. 1997) and has since then published papers about the history and use of bells and bell wheels. Since 1995, he has been working as a researcher at the Museum of Musical Instruments at the University of Leipzig and has played a major role in various research projects, including among others, Die Musikinstrumente der Begräbniskapelle im Dom zu Freiberg von 1594 (“The Musical Instruments of the Funeral Chapel in the Freiberg Cathedral from 1594”) and most recently Martin und Johann Christian Hoffmann – Lauten und Geigenmacher des Barock (“Martin and Johann Christian Hoffmann – Lutes and Violin Makers of the Baroque”). At the University of Music and Theater in Leipzig, Veit Heller teaches historical instruments as well as acoustics and temperaments and accepts lectureships in the music instrument building study program at the West Saxon University of Applied Studies in Zwickau. He is also an instrumentalist with the ensembles Ioculatores and Cantilena aurea, both of which focus on the performance of the music of the Middle Ages.
