FRANCIS GOUTON Cello

 

French cellist Francis Gouton has given concerts as a soloist and chamber musician in many of the major concert halls and festivals on all continents, such as the Columbia University in NYC, Kennedy Centre in Washington D.C., Boston, Los Angeles, the Wigmore Hall in London, Suntory Hall in Tokyo, Shanghai, Sydney Opera House, Berlin Schauspiel Haus, Frankfurt Alte Oper, Teatro Colon Buenos Aires, the festivals of Ludwigsburg, Lyons (musicades), Gstaad, and Saint Barthélémy in the French carribean, with chambermusic partners such as Thomas Brandis, Josef Silverstein, Ana Chumachenko, Nelson Goerner, Anton Nel , Emmanuel Pahud, Bruno Pasquier, Jean-Claude Pennetier, the Jerusalem Quartet among others.

 

As a soloist he played with the Stuttgart state orchestra, the Stuttgarter chamber orchestra, Realfilharmonia de Galicia (Spain) Orquestra sinfonica de Maracaibo (Venezuela), the Wurttemberg chamberorchestra Heilbronn, the Izmir National orchestra (Turkey), and in Japan with Century Orchestra Osaka, The Kanagawa Philharmonic orchestra Yokohama and the Gunma-, Nagoya- and Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestras.​

 

As an eclectic musician he performs the 6 Bach Suites as well as contemporary music, such as concertos by Josef Tàl, Isang Yun and Philip Glass, or the sequanza XIV by L.Berio.

2014 and 2015 he premiered the concertpiece for Cello and Orchestra by Milko Lazar and the 2. concerto by Xaver Paul Thoma, both written for him, with the Stuttgart State Orchestra under James Tuggle and Sylvain Cambreling.

He also records many unknown masterworks of the French repertoire such as the sonatas by Widor, Vierne, Pierné, Emmanuel and Bréville, for radio and CDs whilst he plays with the Claude Bolling Jazz Trio, the saxophonist Danyel Schnyder and percussionist Jason Marsalis.

For many years he has explored the world of Bach in close cooperation with Helmuth Rilling and as a principal cello of the Stuttgart Bach Collegium.

 

A passionate teacher, Francis Gouton is a professor at the Trossingen music conservatory (Germany) and gives master classes across the world, he is guest professor at the Jimei university Xiamen and the TongJi university Shanghai in China, passing on to his students the teaching of his masters Maria Kliegel, Janos Starker and Pierre Fournier.

Invited to Venezuela many times in the project "el sistema", he also went to Haiti in January 2011 to teach in a school in Port-au-Prince, who was devastated during the 2010 earthquake.

 

In 1993, he was awarded with the European price for young artists in Zurich.

 

Francis Gouton plays a Cello by Domenico Montagnana, Venice 1736, and a violoncello made for him by Jean-Fédéric Schmitt- Lyon 2010.

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DANIEL GEISS Cello

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Daniel Geiss is one of the most versatile musicians of his generation. Born in Essen, he studied Cello with Janos Starker and Maria Kliegel, conducting with David Effron and Michael Luig, chamber music with Menahem Pressler, the Alban Berg Quartet, George Crumb and Philipp Glass.

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Daniel Geiss is a regular guest at various chamber music festivals such as the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, the Rheingau Music Festival, the Mosel Music Festival, the Savannah Music Festival, the Prague Music Festival, the Bristol Proms, the Porto Music Festival and plays together with musicians such as Daniel Hope, Sebastian Knauer and Jaques Ammon , Danish String Quartet and Nigel Kennedy. He also worked with conductors such as Kirill Petrenko, Christian Thielemann, Kurt Masur and Marek Janowski.

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As a conductor, he made his debut in the Berlin Philharmonic in 2013 and the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires with the baroque ensemble L'arte del mondo. In 2016 he conducted, among other things, The Zurich Chamber Orchestra at the Schleswig-Holstein Musikfestival.

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He is principal cellist of the Opera in Wiesbaden and a member of the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra.

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Daniel Geiß teaches Violoncello at the University of Music in Mainz, the PCK-Conservatory and conducting at the University of Graz.

He gave cello masterclasses in the U.S., Portugal, Italy, Austria and Germany.

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He is artistic director of the Orchesterzentrum der Kunstuniversität Graz and appointed chief conductor of the EUphony Symphony Orchestra.