Justus Grimm received his first introductory cello lessons at the age of five at first from his father, followed by studies with Ulrich Voss, Claus Kanngiesser and later with Frans Helmerson in Stockholm and Cologne.

He proved his outstanding talent in various competitions. Playing alongside the pianist Florian Wiek, he also won the first prize in the Maria Canals music competition in Barcelona and was also awarded the prize of the German Music Council. Justus Grimm’s solo and chamber music performances took him throughout Europe. The beginning of his career in 1993 was marked by his splendid performance as a soloist in the première by Matthias Pintscher’s cello concert “La Metamorfosi di Narciso” with the Hamburg Philharmonic Orchestra and continued to maintain his solo performance in cooperation with many other orchestras, including the English Chamber Orchestra, the London Chamber Orchestra, the Orchestre Royal de Wallonie, the Orchestre Symphonique de la Monnaie, the Bonn Classical Philharmonic or the Brandenburg State Orchestra Frankfurt. As part of his performances, Justus Grimm was already a guest in many of the most renowned concert halls in the world like the Berlin Philharmonic, the Music Hall in Hamburg, the Cologne Philharmonic, the Theatre du Chatelet in Paris, the Munich Hercules Hall and the Cultural Centre in Lisbon. In 2012 his performance of Tchaikovsky’s “Rococo Variations” with the Orchestre Symphonique de la Monnaie conducted by Carlo Rizzi was broadcast live from the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels as part of a TV production.

Justus Grimm made his remarkable chamber music career together with renowned artists like Abdel Raman El Bacha, Daniel Blumenthal, Gerard Caussé, Augustin Dumay, Stephen Kovacevich, Katia and Marielle Labeque, Antonio Pappano and Kazushi Ono. He accepted invitations to major festivals, including the Ludwigsburg Festival, the Festival van Vlaanderen, Lisbon’s Dias da Musica, the Florilegio Salamanca Festival, Brussel’s Klara Music Festival and the Resonances Festival. Since 2010 he has been artist at the residence of the “Cantiere Internazionale d’Arte di Montepulciano”. Besides live recordings by many European radio stations there are already numerous CD records. Worth mentioning here is a CD, Trio Wiek (Christina Fassbender, Justus Grimm and Florian Wiek) with works by Philippe Gaubert, who was awarded a 5/5 rating by the French magazine Diapaison. 2012 saw the recording with earlier works by George Enescu that was highly acclaimed by the international press and shortly thereafter a complete recording of the chamber music works by Cesar Franck, which was awarded the Prix Cecilia as the best CD of the year 2012 by the Belgian press.

As a founding member of the Malibran quartet ( www.malibranquartet.com ) he devoted himself to the exceptionally rich repertoire of this genre since 2008. Teaching plays a central role in the artistic life of Justus Grimm. Following tutorship at the Brussels Chapelle Reine Elisabeth (2002-2003) and at the Institut Superieur de Musique de Namur (2003-2008), he held the title as professor for violoncello at the Royal Conservatory of Antwerp in 2008, where he acts also as the Arts Director since 2013.

Karmen Pečar Koritnik is a renowned Slovenian cellist and pedagogue. She completed her undergraduate and master’s studies in the class of professor Valter Dešpalj at the Academy of Music, University of Zagreb, and continued her training with professor Reinhard Latzko at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna.

In 2001, she won the prestigious Dr. Luis Sigall Cello Competition in Chile (Viña del Mar). At the Eurovision Young Musicians competition in Berlin in 2002, she received third prize, and in 2004 she was awarded second prize at the Antonio Janigro International Cello Competition in Zagreb.

As a soloist, she has performed with numerous orchestras at home and abroad under the baton of renowned conductors. She has collaborated with esteemed artists such as Boris Pergamenschikow, Misha Maisky, Giovanni Sollima, Gottlieb Wallisch, Melina Mandozzi, Dmitry Ferschtman, Božo Paradžik, Monika Leskovar, Latica Honda-Rosenberg, Rudolf Leopold, and others.

She worked for several years at the Academy of Music, University of Zagreb, as assistant to professor Valter Dešpalj. She is currently a cello professor at the Conservatory of Music and Ballet in Ljubljana and taught for five years as a part-time lecturer at the Academy of Music, University of Ljubljana.

For many years, she has led masterclasses as part of the Summer Music Festival at Podsreda Castle and the Amadeo Festival in Škofja Loka. Each year, under the auspices of the Bled Festival, she also leads a cello ensemble seminar. She is the artistic director of the CelloFest Ljubljana Festival.

Gal Faganel is a versatile award-winning cello performer, an acclaimed teacher, a recording artist, and a researcher. He has performed extensively as a soloist and a chamber musician throughout the United States and in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. His performances and recordings have been praised in the press for “exceptionally sensitive interpretation,” his “powerful and beautiful tone,” and “brilliant virtuosity and youthful vigor.”

He is a winner of numerous national and international competitions including the International Cello Competition “Antonio Janigro” in Croatia, the American String Teacher’s Association Competition, and the Yamaha Young Performing Artists Competition in the United States. Faganel has been researching, cataloging, performing, and recording music for cello by Slovenian composers. He has recorded for many labels and radio stations internationally and has commissioned new works as a cellist of the Colorado Piano Trio. Collaboration with choirs is also one of Faganel’s passions which resulted in internationally broadcast performance of Sofia Gubaidulina’s Canticle of the Sun with Slovenian Philharmonic Choir, and a recent premiere of Damijan Močnik’s Genesis, both a sort of cello concerto with choir. As a researcher Faganel has also been investigating acoustical challenges of cello-piano sonata duo, the effects of piano lid position on piano sound, nuances of pizzicato, motion sensor-based motion capture for performing musicians, pedagogical application of live spectral analysis of sound, ethics in the arts, and other engaging problems.

He has presented at many international conferences including the European String Teachers’ Association, European Piano Teachers’ Association, Music Teachers’ National Association, College Music Society, and American String Teachers’ Association. With a doctorate from the University of Southern California under the mentorship of Eleonore Schoenfeld, he was previously the principal cellist of the Phoenix Symphony. Faganel is now professor of cello at the University of Ljubljana Academy of Music and appears as a guest at institutions around the world.

His previous teaching appointments include University of Northern Colorado, University of North Texas, Scottsdale Community College, and the University of Southern California. In addition to being an innovative and devoted cello pedagogue, Faganel loves coaching chamber music, frequently trains musicians in preparation for orchestral auditions, mentors developing musicians, and leads career development workshops.

Romain Garioud is prize winner at such prestigious international competitions as Moscow’s Tchaikovsky (2001) and Paris’ Rostropovitch (2002), he is also a second prize winner at Chile’s Vina del Mar competition in 2002. In 2005, Romain Garioud wins the 1st Prize of Bucchi’s International Cello Competition.

He graduated from Paris’s Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique with a First Prize in both cello (1997) and chamber music (1998) and Konzertexam. Known for his outstanding sound and sense of phrasing, Romain Garioud has had the privilege of working with such widely renowned cellists as Philippe Muller, Anner Bylsma, Natalia Chakovskaia, David Geringas, Steven Isserlis…

Nowadays, his career alternates between solists engagements on every continent, Masterclasses and his positions of Professor in the «Akademie fur Tonkunst» of Darmstadt.

Romain Garioud played Lutoslawsly’s cello concerto for the Yuri Bashmet’s festival of Minsk with the television orchestra, was also invited to play for the “Marta Argerich Project” in Lugano, substituted Natalia Gutman in the 1st Shostakovitch’s Cello concerto with the orchestra «Casa da Musica» of Porto (Portugal), recently played the Dvorjak Cello Concerto with the conductor Michael Sanderling and the Aalborg Philarmonic (DK) and with such orchestras as the Philarmonic and the Radio Orchestra of Sofia-Bulgary. He played with such conductors as Christoph Eschenbach (Orchestre de Paris), Volodymir Sirenko (Nat. of Ukraine) and with prestigious chamber music partners like Mstislav Rostropovitch, Menahem Presler, Gilles Apap, Philippe Entremont, Regis et Bruno Pasquier, Ulf Wallin… in the most famous concert halls, Musikverein and Konzerthaus Wien, Berlin Philharmonie. Several of his concerts were recorded by Radio France or Music Cable TV channel Mezzo.

From 2021, he’s fouding member of the «TriOdyssey» with the violinist Laurent Albrecht Breuninger and the pianist Rinko Hama.  He’s playing an exceptional Nicolai Gagliano’s cello from 1760, generously lent by Gabriele & Michael Andreae-Jäckering.

Vid Veljak (1996) has distinguished himself on the Croatian and international scene as one of the youngest, most talented and versatile cellists, excelling as a soloist in both, classical and contemporary music. His artistry also extends to chamber music and experimental projects, reflecting a broad and adventurous musical identity. He began studying the cello at the age of three under the guidance of Tatjana Skljarenko, and soon after with Mauro Šestan in Rijeka.

His talent was recognized very early by the prominent cellist and pedagogue Valter Dešpalj, who invited him to join his class at the Academy of Music in Zagreb, where he passed the entrance exam at the age of 14 and graduated in 2017. From 2012 to 2015, he simultaneously studied at the International Music Academy of the Principality of Liechtenstein in the class of Jens Peter Maintz and V. Dešpalj. He also studied with Romain Garioud in Paris from 2016 to 2018. He attended masterclasses with renowned cellists such as Giovanni Sollima, Enrico Bronzi, Laszlo Fenyö, Miklós Perényi, Gustavo Tavares, Michael Flaxman, Xenia Janković, among others. He won numerous competitions, including the Antonio Janigro International Competition in Poreč and Daleki akordi in Split. He is the founder and a member of the Rijeka Piano Trio alongside pianist Filip Fak and violinist Krunoslav Marić.

He is also a member of the international contemporary music ensemble Synchronos. During his studies, besides perfecting the canonical repertoire, he focused on performing contemporary cello music, premiering many works by Croatian composers, several of whom dedicated compositions to him (e.g., Asterión Concerto for Cello and Chamber Orchestra by Tomislav Oliver – making him the youngest Croatian cellist to whom a concerto has been dedicated – Idioma I by Tomislav Oliver, and the Cello Concerto by Davor Bobić). He is one of the founders of the NAE Collective, which brings together prominent young musicians and multimedia artists with the goal of promoting contemporary electroacoustic music and multimedia arts.

He stood out with solo recitals, performing some of the most complex works for cello and electronics at the Music Tribune in Opatija 2018 and the Music Biennale Zagreb 2021, for which an online recital was recorded. From March 2019 to 2022, he was the principal cellist of the Dubrovnik Symphony Orchestra, regularly performing as a soloist. In 2019, he launched the project Resonance(s), dedicated to recording works for solo cello (and electronics) by Croatian composers, aiming to promote 20th- and 21st-century compositions and encourage the creation of new works. With this project, he released two albums. In 2022, the album Resonance(s) II won the Porin discographic award (and was nominated in four classical music categories).

Since June 2022, he has been a member of the Zagreb Soloists ensemble, and in September of the same year, he became the principal cellist of the Croatian National Theatre Orchestra in Zagreb. In November 2022, he toured with the ensemble as part of the international Hans Zender Academy under the mentorship of Ensemble Modern members. Since 2022, he has been a cello professor at the Academy of Fine Arts and Music in Split, where he became an assistant professor at only 26 years old.