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Hortênsia Music Festival

14th - 21st July 2023

Terceira, Azores - Portugal

The Hortênsia Music Festival is a yearly classical music festival located in the beautiful UNESCO world heritage city of Angra do Heroísmo on the island of Terceira, Azores.

Since 2017 Angra do Heroísmo has been the summer meeting point for a group of passionate professional musicians, both Portuguese and international. Over the course of this festival they offer diverse chamber music concerts and lead daily masterclasses for students of all ages. Such an environment of shared knowledge and artistic experiences creates unique opportunities for young music students to develop their capacities under professional guidance.

Through concerts and lessons, which are all open to the public, the Hortênsia Music Festival aims to promote the artistic interaction within the community by bringing together children, youth and adults around a common love for music.

The festival is made possible by the continuing generous support of the Câmara Municipal de Angra do Heroísmo and the Escola Básica e Secundária Tomás de Borba de Angra do Heroísmo.

Concerts

The festival’s concerts typically present a varied repertoire ranging from the Baroque to the Contemporary, with a focus on Classical and Romantic composers. The invited musicians come together in various chamber music ensembles, such as duos with piano, string trios, piano quartets and quintets.

The concerts take place in a number of beautiful locations, including historic churches, the iconic Salão Nobre dos Paços do Concelho and the Centro Cultural e de Congressos de Angra do Heroísmo.

Masterclasses

Our masterclass offers a wonderful opportunity for students of all ages to develop their musical abilities through daily individual lessons with experienced teachers and performers. In addition to their solo instrumental lessons, students can apply for chamber music coaching, which gives them a valuable experience in playing together with other participants of the festival.

The lessons are held at the Escola Básica e Secundária Tomás de Borba (EBSTB) de Angra do Heroísmo .

Agenda 2023

Programação - Hortênsia Music Festival
Concerto de Abertura - DUMKA
Concerto & Prova de Vinhos - Liberdade
Concerto Final - Encontro Romantico
Previous
Next

Masterclass 2023

Tamila
Kharambura

Violin

Bio

William
Grigg

Violin

Bio

Paul
Tulloch

Viola

Bio

Fernando
Costa

Cello

Bio

Claudia
Chan

Piano

Bio

Iryna
Brazhnik

Piano

Bio

General Information

Masterclass 2023: 14th – 21st July 2023

Arrival date: 14th July
Departure date: 22nd July

Location: All individual and chamber music lessons, as well as practice rooms, are situated at the Escola Básica e Secundária Tomás de Borba de Angra do Heroísmo.

Lessons: Each student / ensemble will receive 3 lessons, plus public performance opportunities.
Lessons can be given in English, Portuguese and German.

Student Concert: All the participants are invited to perform in the final concerts, which will take place on the 19th and 21st of July.

Application Deadline: 15th June
Early application is recommended due to limited number of places.

Costs

Solo Participants:
Under 18 years of age / Internal Students of EBSTB: 75€
Over 18 years of age: 125€ 

Chamber music (duo, trio, quartet or quintet): 50€ per person

Solo + Chamber music:
Under 18 years of age / Internal Students: 100€
Over 18 years of age: 150€

Passive participants: Free entrance

Note: We offer 30% discount for siblings

Accommodation

Angra do Heroísmo has a variety of accommodation options. The Hortênsia Music Festival has an agreement with two wonderful local accommodations listed below, offering discounted prices for participants: Memória Boutique Hostel and My Angra Charming House.

Location: Rua da Miragaia, 15, 9700-124‬ Angra do Heroísmo, Ilha Terceira, Açores
Contacts: ‪+351 967‬ ‪874 105‬ | ‪+351 295 215 250‬
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: www.memoriahostel.pt

My Angra Charming House
Location: Rua de São Pedro 168, 9700-187 | Angra do Heroísmo
Contacts: (+351) 96 350 50 87
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: myangra.com

Please contact them directly or write to [email protected] for more information.

Application Form

Applications for the 2023 Hortênsia Music Festival 5th Edition are now closed. 

Contact

Email: [email protected]
Phone: (+351) 91 676 48 70

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Photography

Rui Caria
Taras Kharambura
Rebeca Roxo Couto
Hannes Liebminger

Tamila Kharambura

Violinist Tamila Kharambura was born in Lviv, Ukraine and at the age of five moved with her family to Portugal. She presents herself in regular recitals and chamber music concerts within Europe and frequently performs as a soloist with orchestra in Portugal and in her country of birth – Ukraine. She has also played in various orchestras such as the Gulbenkian Orchestra, Volksoper Wien, Wiener KammerOrchester, Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, Gürzenich Orchester-Köln and Sinfonieorchester Aachen. Between 2016 – 2022 she has held the position of Professor of Violin at the university Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa. Having a passion for education and pedagogic work, Tamila co-founded in 2017 the Hortênsia Music Festival – a yearly masterclass and concert series set in the Azores, Portugal.

Tamila studied with her mother Elena Kharambura, with Gareguin Aroutiounian, Pavel Vernikov, Vesna Stankovic-Moffatt and Albena Danailova. She has received prizes in various national and international competitions, such as the competition “Prémio Jovens Músicos RDP” in Portugal (1st prize, 2011), where she was awarded the Young Musician of the Year 2011 Award.

In 2016 she premiered and recorded with Orquestra Metropolitana de Lisboa and maestro Garry Walker the Violin Concerto by acclaimed Portuguese composer António Pinho Vargas, a work dedicated in memory of her teacher Gareguin Aroutiounian. Other notable solo engagements included performances with the Gulbenkian Orchestra, Portuguese Symphonic Orchestra, Symphonic Orchestra of Casa da Música do Porto, Artquest Orchestra, Orquestra Clássica do Centro and Lviv Virtuosi Orchestra from the Lviv Philharmonic Orchestra (Ukraine).

William Grigg

Will is an Australian-born violinist, living in Cologne, Germany. He is a member of the Gürzenich-Orchestra in Cologne, and plays in the Bayreuther Festspiele.

Will grew up in Melbourne where he studied at the University of Melbourne with Fintan Murphy and Elizabeth Sellars. In 2009 he moved to Cologne to continue his studies with Gorjan Kosuta at the Cologne University for Music and Dance and Yamei Yu at the Robert Schumann Music School in Düsseldorf, where he completed his Masters Degree with distinction. He has participated in masterclasses with Christoph Poppen, Ida Bieler, Jean Jacques Kantorow and Stephan Picard, amongst others, and has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Bertha Jorgensen Exhibition and the Welsford Smithers Travelling Scholarship.

Alongside his work in the orchestra he is an avid chamber musician and loves to cook.

Paul Tulloch

Born in 1986 in Melbourne, Australia, violist Paul Tulloch performs in a number of musical settings ranging from solo to chamber and orchestral engagements. He is a member of the Aachen Symphony Orchestra, Germany, and has previously performed with the ORF Radio- Symphonieorchester Wien and the Vienna Chamber Orchestra (Austria), the Orquestra Gulbenkian (Portugal), and the WDR Funkhausorchester (Germany).

Paul completed his Konzertexamen (Solo Studies) with Honours under the guidance of DiemutPoppen at the Hochschule für Musik Detmold in Germany. Additionally, he has furthered his musical development with a number of renowned violists such as Matthias Maurer, Samuel Barsegian, Mario Gheorgiu and Tobias Lea.

Having undertaken his initial studies in violin, Paul received his Bachelor degree in his hometown, at the University of Melbourne, under Nelli Shkolnikova, Robert Davidovici, and Elizabeth Sellars. He gained his Masters degree with distinction from the Florida International University, USA, studying with Robert Davidovici while also employed as his Teaching Assistant. After moving to Europe, he studied with Ida Bieber at the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Graz in Austria.

In 2017 Paul co-founded the annual Hortênsia Music Festival in the Azores, Portugal, a festival orientated towards chamber music and musical education through a series of masterclasses and concerts. Paul has given masterclasses at Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa, Portugal, as part of their Festival de Cordas, and in Vienna with the Melbourne Chamber Strings.

Aside from his instrumental playing, Paul performed as a singer in acclaimed Australian choirs from a young age.

Fernando Costa

Fernando Costa has been claimed as a safe value of the new generation of performers in Portugal. A cellist whose recognition and prestigious awards are the result of his emotional resonant performances, marked by a strong presence on stage and an expressive and musical sensitivity combined with a dynamic and impulsive style.

Portuguese cellist born in 1991 started his cello studies with Valter Mateus and finished his Bachelors (2013) with maximum classification at Superior School of Music and Performing Arts (ESMAE, Oporto) in Jed Barahal’s class. In 2015 he has finished his Master Degree in Music Performance under the guidance of the prestigious cellist Antonio Meneses at Hochschule der Künste Bern, in Switzerland.

As soloist he has performed with Orquestra Gulbenkian, Orquestra do Norte, Orquestra de Câmara de Cascais e Oeiras, Orquestra Sinfonieta da Esmae and others. His concerts always range from solo to chamber music having, currently, a regular musical activity in Portugal and abroad. As recent projects stand out the tours in Brazil, EUA, China and the participation in several Music Festivals like in Portugal, Germany, France and Azerbaijan.

He was holding a scholarship from Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation from 2013 until 2015. He has already released three albums since 2015, being recently published his third CD release – Heritage – together with the pianist Luís Costa, for the label KNS Classical.

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Claudia Chan

Hailed as the new “Ambassador for New Music” (The Ottawa Citizen) and proclaimed “dazzling” (Classicagenda) and “brilliant” (Piano News), pianist Claudia Chan is known as one of the foremost young interpreters of contemporary music and has been praised for a “piano playing that moves seemingly effortlessly between often hair-raising (but never self-indulgent) virtuosity and sublime sound development” (Fono Forum). Her thoughtful interpretations of music from Brahms to Boulez and beyond have been heard in major concert halls in Canada, the US, Italy, France, Germany, Austria, and South Korea, as well as on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Radio France, and all major German radio stations.

From ‪2017-2020‬, Claudia was Artist-in-Residence of the contemporary music department at the famed Fondation Royaumont in France, where she organized and presented concerts, interdisciplinary projects, and gave a series of lecture-recitals on contemporary piano music. For her work, she has been featured in an episode of CBC’s Next! as one of 8 up-and-coming young musicians from Canada, been profiled by the Huffington Post, and awarded grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, Deutscher Musikrat, and the Dörken Stiftung. Since relocating to Germany, she has been heard as soloist and chamber musician at the Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik, Acht Brücken Festival (Cologne), Tongyeong International Music Festival (South Korea), the MATA Festival (New York City), the Klangspuren Schwaz Festival, the Festival Musica Strasbourg, the 21C Festival (Toronto), the Ottawa International Chamber Music Festival, the New Creations Festival (Toronto), the Sommerliche Musiktage Hitzacker, and PianoCity Milan and founded the award-winning new music quartet BRuCH, who have been invited to play at major festivals and profiled by the Westdeutscher Rundfunk and Deutschlandfunk.

She has given masterclasses and workshops at conservatories and universities across Canada, the United States, France, and Germany. Claudia has worked closely with such composers as Helmut Lachenmann, Rebecca Saunders, Georg Friedrich Haas, Philippe Leroux, Hans Thomalla, Unsuk Chin, Johannes Schöllhorn, Oliver Schneller, Vassos Nicolaou, Brian Current, and Alice Ho, and been the dedicatee of works by many young, exciting composers.

Also active as a conductor, Claudia has been appointed musical director of the premiere of a new chamber opera from Georg Friedrich Haas at the Konzert Theater Bern in Switzerland in 2022. She completed her undergraduate studies at The Glenn Gould School of The Royal Conservatory, studying with David Louie and John Perry, her Master’s of Music at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln with Prof. Dr. Florence Millet, graduated with highest honours from the Master’s of New Piano Music in the class of Prof. Pierre-Laurent Aimard, after which she obtained a Konzertexamen with Distinction in contemporary chamber music with BRuCH, under the direction of Prof. Barbara Maurer, as the ensemble-in-residence at the Folkwang Universität der Künste in Essen. In fall 2018, Claudia joined the piano faculty of the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln.

Her debut solo CD, “Thoughts about the Piano”, featuring music by Elliott Carter, Iannis Xenakis, Philippe Leroux and pieces commissioned for her by Annie Hui-Hsin Hsieh, Matthew Chamberlain and Mael Bailly, was released on B Records (France) in March 2021 to much acclaim, being named CD of the week by Radio France, and awarded 5 stars from Diapason, Classica, and Fono Forum shortly thereafter.

Iryna Brazhnik

Ukrainian pianist Iryna Brazhnik began her piano studies at the tender age of four. She continued her studies (1996-1999) at the Kamianets-Podilsky School of Arts with Tatiana Yakovinich. In 1999 she entered to the M. Lysenko Special Music School in Kyiv, where she studied piano with Iryna Lipatova, Tatiana Abaieva and Boris Fedorov. In 2008 she advanced to the Superior Music School of Lisbon, where she completed her Masters Degree in Piano with Professor Miguel Henriques. Shortly thereafter she completed her Specialist in Music Degree.

She has attended Masterclasses with Diemut Poppen, Alvaro Lopes Ferreira (Chamber Music), Christiane Karajev, Dmitri Alexeev and Galina Eguiazarova (Piano).

Throughout the professional career, she has won numerous prizes in piano competitions and festivals in Ukraine, Portugal, Czech Republic and Georgia.

She was considered as the Best Student of the 1st Cycle of the academic year 2010-2011 at Superior Music School of Lisbon and was awarded by Caixa Geral de Depósitos. She won the Incentive Award for Fixing the New Portuguese Music Repertoire on record, awarded under the MODE’16 program, organized by the GDA Foundation in 2019.

An active soloist and chamber musician, Iryna Brazhnik has performed with ensembles including the Kharkiv Chamber Orchestra (2006) , the Lisbon School of Music Symphony Orchestra (2011) and the ESML Saxophone Project (2021 in Portugal and 2022 in Cyprus). She recorded and performed in direct transmission for Antena 2 radio station (2009, 2010, 2013 and 2022). She participated in several Piano recitals of the series “Concertos à Conversa” organized by Miguel Henriques at the Centro Cultural de Belém (Lisbon) in 2010 and 2011. Also, in 2010, Iryna has participated in the spectacle “Não se ganha, não se paga”, having performed at Teatro da Trindade (Lisbon), Teatro São João (Porto) and Teatro Micaelense (Ponta Delgada). In 2019, worked for Teatro São Luiz in Lisbon, as a collaborative pianist of the opera “La Fille du Tambour Major” of the Jacques Offenbach.

As a collaborative pianist, she performed for the “Internacional Saxophone Competition Vítor Santos” as part of the Palmela International Saxofone Festival (2016, 2019), for “José Massarrão International Competition” (2019, 2021) and for the YMFE Competition (Yamaha) in 2022.

As a performer and composer of new works, she co-founded the group AiDuo with saxophonist Artur Mendes in 2011. AiDuo has performed at various festivals and international congresses, as well as performances in several concert halls in Portugal. In May 2017 the duo held a Piano and Saxophone Masterclass, promoted and organized by the Palmela Regional Conservatory. In 2021, AiDuo led the international consortium (29 participants) to commission a new piece entitled “Prelúdio, Nocturno e Stepdance” for Tenor Saxophone and Piano, by renowned composer António Victorino d’Almeida. Since 2018 Iryna has written several works for AiDuo as well as other works for multiple instruments. Also, she is regularly invited to do premiers of recent works by contemporary composers.

She recorded the CD “Unfinished” (Jomo), a fusion between Jazz and Modern Music (2015) and the CD “On the way…”, marking the 5th anniversary of the AiDuo group (2016).

Iryna currently works as a professor of collaborative piano at the Superior Music School in Lisbon.

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