Meet The Team 2025

Juan María Braceras is a highly versatile violinist with a multifaceted career that spans a wide range of musical genres and disciplines. He began studying the violin at the age of 11 in Natal, Brazil, and has as guidance Osvaldo D’Amore, Rucker Bezerra and Alexandre Casado. At 18, he was appointed first violin of the Orquestra Sinfônica da Bahia (OSBA) in Salvador.

In 2010 he graduated with “Distinction” from the Haute École de Musique de Genève, where he studied with Mme. Margarita Piguet-Karafilova and M. Gabor Takacs in Chamber Music. He later completed in 2014 his Master’s in Performance at the Hochschule für Musik Basel under Mme. Adelina Oprean and obtained also his Soloist Diploma in 2017 in Amandine Beyer’s class and Adelina Oprean’s.

He has participated in prestigious festivals and masterclasses with artists such as Alberto Lysy, Pavel Vernikov, Sidney Hart, and Ana Chumachenco, and has been a finalist and winner of national competitions for young musicians in Brazil. His discography includes diverse genres such as Brazilian popular music and Cuban Afro-jazz (Zamazú), in addition to composing for the fusion group Puchero, blending Tango, Rock, Funk, Techno, and Pop.

He has collaborated with renowned Brazilian artists such as Caetano Veloso, Carlinhos Brown, Gilberto Gil, Geraldo Azevedo, Sivuca, and others, and played for eight years in the Mariachi band “Quetzal.”

In addition to his performance career, he has played an important role in mentoring young musicians. At the age of 18, he was an assistant professor at the Universidade Federal da Bahia, taught at the Geneva Conservatory, and worked within the Neojiba youth orchestras system. He has also taught at the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien and served as a musician and coach at the Verbier Festival. He was a professor at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels.

Currently, he performs with the Orquesta Típica de Tango Silencio and engages in chamber music with artists such as Dana Ciocarlie, Christoph Coin, Plamena Nikitassova, the Mosaïques Quartet, Pablo Márquez, among others. He is also part of the ensembles TORO with Nathan Kirzon and the string trio “3” alongside Ekachai Maskulrat and Anna Gebert.

He serves as Artistic Director of the Andante Association and has developed projects at iconic locations such as Sutra House and Château de Promenois, where he created the Stage de Musique Promenois, a program designed for young musicians that combines top-tier training with a unique cultural experience.

In the realm of dance, he has collaborated with choreographers such as Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker (Rosas), Johanna Heusser, and Timo Paris, contributing to the creation of innovative dance works.

Throughout his career, he has performed with renowned ensembles such as Kammerorchester Basel, Geneva Camerata, Basel Sinfonietta, Anima Eterna, Gstaad Festival Orchestra, and many others. He currently plays a Jacques Bocquay, Vieux Paris, 1718 violin, on loan from Stiftung Pirolo.

I am a passionate Shiatsu Therapist, running my own practice since 2017. My journey in Shiatsu and Qigong has taken me across Switzerland, the UK, Germany, and Austria, where I have developed my skills and deepened my understanding of holistic well-being.

Since the inception of Juan and the Stage de Music project, I have been actively involved in supporting young musicians. My focus is on helping them develop body awareness and equipping them with simple exercises to stay grounded during their challenging journeys. I aim to guide them in caring for their body, mind, and spirit, fostering resilience and harmony in their artistic endeavors.

Anna Gebert is a sought-after chamber musician, teacher, concertmaster and baroque violinist. Her repertoire includes music from early baroque to contemporary.

She is currently Professor of Chamber Music at the Basel Academy of Music and Professor of Violin at the Zurich University of the Arts.

She performs at chamber music festivals and teaches masterclasses in many European countries and the USA.

At the age of 15 she was accepted into the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra, two years later she was a founding member of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra.

After the Karajan Academy and a year of full employment with the Berlin Philharmonic, Anna Gebert was in 2007 appointed concertmaster of the Gürzenich Orchestra in Cologne and subsequently of the Trondheim Symphony Orchestra in Norway until 2019. At the same time, she studied education and psychology and taught at the University of Trondheim.

As concertmaster and section leader she has appeared with over 25 major European opera and symphony orchestras, including the London Symphony Orchestra, Bavarian State Opera, BR Symphony Orchestra, Stockholm Philharmonic, Helsinki Philharmonic, Frankfurt Museum Orchestra, HR Frankfurt, Philharmonia Zurich, Oslo Barokkanerne and Helsinki Baroque Orchestras. Her operatic repertoire includes over 60 operas.

After starting to play the violin at the age of 4 taught by her mother, her first teachers included Zinaida Gilels and Zoria Chikmurzaeva. She studied with Igor Bezrodny in Helsinki, Magdalena Rezler in Freiburg im Breisgau, postgraduate studies with Ana Chumachenco in Munich, with Miriam Fried and Paul Biss in Bloomington, Indiana, while studying baroque violin with Stanley Ritchie and Walter Reiter, who remains an important mentor for her to this day. She plays a violin by Joseph Gagliano from
1794.

Anna Gebert shapes her teaching with a great deal of empathy and a holistic understanding of human psychology. The experiences of each person and their individual paths are to be taken into account as well as the questions into which we must first live:

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day
into the answer.”

― Rainer Maria Rilke

Anton Kernjak comes from an Austrian family with Slovenian background. He studied at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg and later attended concert classes with Rudolf Buchbinder at the Basel „Musikhochschule“, where he graduated with distinction. He was greatly influenced by his studies with the Hungarian musician Ferenc Rados and by master classes with György Kurtág at the IMS International Musicians Seminars in Prussia Cove, UK. 

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Anton Kernjak has received several awards and was a prize-winner at the international Johannes Brahms piano competition in Austria. 

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An accomplished chamber musician, he has performed with different duo and trio partners throughout Europe, in Canada, the USA and Japan. Past appearances were at the Tonhalle Zurich, the WDR Cologne, Wigmore Hall, London and Carnegie Hall, New York. He was also appeared at the Lucerne Festival, the World Music Days in Luxembourg, the Kunstfest „pelerinages“ in Weimar, the European Music Month in Basel, the Davos Music Festival, the Ittinger Pfingstkonzerte, the Bodensee-Festival, the WDR Chamber Music Series in Cologne and the Festival international de Musique de Chambre Domaine Forget in Canada and the Sermoneta Festival near Rome. 

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Anton Kernjak has formed a duo with cellist Anita Leuzinger a number of years ago and regularly collaborates with Heinz Holliger. Other chamber music partners include Ursula Holliger, Thomas Demenga, Hanna Weinmeister, Muriel Cantoreggi, Geneviève Strosser and Silvia Simionescu. In addition to the classical-romantic repertoire, his artistic interests focus on contemporary music. 

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Anton Kernjak teaches chamber music at the Basel „Musikhochschule“.

The Argentian soprano, Maria Cristina Kiehr, born to Danish descendents, received her early musical training in Argentina. She studied the violin as a child, in the city of Tandil in Argentina, but at the age of 17, she discovered her soft, amazing soprano and her love of Baroque music. The discovery led to a fast change: After only a year of singing lessons, in 1983, she went to Europe, to the leading institute in the revolution seeking authenticity in the performance of Early Music: the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, and studied under René Jacobs. Later she said: “he is the musician who has had the most influence on me”. At the same time she took courses in vocal technique with Eva Krasnai.

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Maria Cristina Kiehr is an all-European artist, and Switzerland is still her home. Kiehr is married to a cellist, Orlando Theuler. From Basel, she travels to performances in many countries, with the best conductors in the field. She is incontestably one of today’s leading vocal artists in the field of Baroque music and has appeared throughout the world in concerts and recordings with celebrated conductors, like René Jacobs, Jordi Savall, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Philippe Herreweghe, Frans Brüggen, Gustav Leonhardt, Konrad Junghänel, and with orchestras and ensembles specializing in the Baroque music field, as Concerto Vocale Leipzig, La Fenice, Cantus Cölln, Ensemble Vocal Européen, Hespèrion XX, Elyma, Nederlands Kamerkoor, Concerto Köln, Ensemble 415, etc.

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Maria Cristina Kiehr is particularly interested in early Baroque music. She is co-founder of the ensembles “La Colombina”, “Daedalus” and “Concerto Soave”. From the start of her career, she was attracted by integration as a singer alongside other singers and musicians, within the polyphonic texture. Later she moved to a somewhat different phase, and is turning more to the solo route.

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In 1988 Maria Cristina Kiehr made her opera début in Innsbruck in Cavalli’s Giasone under René Jacobs. She has also sung in L’Incoronazione di Poppea, Orontea, and Dido and Aeneas (Purcell) under René Jacobs, Dafne (Gagliano), L’Orfeo (Monteverdi) and Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria (Monteverdi) under Gabriel Garrido, as well as the title role in Dorillo in Tempe (Antonio Vivaldi) under Gilbert Bezzina and Il schiavo di sua moglie (Provenzale) under Toni Florio. Her operatic repertoire encompasses also works by Georg Philipp Telemann (Orpheus), Blow (Venus y Adonis), Glück (Orphée et Euridice), Cesti (L’Orontea), Haydn (Orlando Palladino); she has also recorded most of these works.

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Maria Cristina Kiehr sang the part of Mary Magdalen in Antonio Caldara’s oratorio Maddalena ai piedi di Cristo and took part in the new recording of Monteverdi’s Vespro della Beata Vergine, both under René Jacobs, and both of which were greeted with universal acclaim.

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One example of this new career path is a wonderful CD containing motets by Monteverdi, “Pianto della Madonna.” Another example is her new CD, with the same musicians, devoted to Sicilian composer Sigismondo D’India, also from the early Baroque period

The Argentinian guitarist Pablo Márquez is considered today as one of the most accomplished and versatile virtuosi of his instrument. Outstanding interpreter of contemporary music, who collaborates regularly with groups such as the Ensemble Intercontemporain, he is equally acclaimed for his passionated and equilibrated versions of the historical masterpieces as well as the Argentine traditional music.

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He started his guitar studies at the age of 10, and three years later he gave his first performance with orchestra in Salta, the city in the Northwest of Argentina where he grew up and received his first training. He then studied in Buenos Aires with Jorge Martínez Zárate and Eduardo Fernández. His student period came brillanty to an end with the unanimous First prizes at the Villa-Lobos and Radio France international competitions in Rio de Janeiro and Paris respectively. Later prizes at the Geneva and Munich competitions confirmed his outstanding and rare artistry. A complete musician, he studied conducting with Eric Sobzyck, Rodolfo Fischer and Peter Eötvös, and followed the teaching of the legendary pianist György Sebök, who made on him the most profound and lasting impression.

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His career evolves in more than 40 countries, being acclaimed at the most prestigious halls (e.g., Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Teatro Colón of Buenos Aires, Herkulessaal in Munich, Auditorio Reina Sofía in Madrid, National Recital Hall in Taipei, Théâtre du Châtelet and Philharmonie in Paris), as well as great festivals (e.g., Aix-en-Provence, Avignon, Ultraschall in Berlin, Musica in Strasbourg, San Sebastián…). He established fruitful collaborations with musicians such as Anja Lechner, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Dino Saluzzi, Maria Cristina Kiehr, the Rosamunde Quartett of Munich and Mario Caroli. He is regularly invited to perform as a soloist with great orchestras and ensembles (e.g., Bayerische Rundfunk of Munich, Sinfonieorchester des WDR Köln, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Orchestra della Svizzera italiana, Nouvel Ensemble Moderne de Montreal, Plural Ensemble of Madrid, Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de Colombia), under de baton of Susanna Mälkki, Dennis Russel Davies, Lorraine Vaillancourt, Josep Pons, Ernest Martínez Izquierdo, Christian Ehwald, Tomaz Golka, Mark Foster, Pavel Baleff, Jean-Michaël Lavoie, Fabián Panisello and others.

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His continuous commitment to contemporary music has led to several first performances and to close collaborations with the greatest composers of our time such as Luciano Berio, György Kurtág
and Mauricio Kagel. Pierre Boulez invited him to play Berio’ Sequenza XI for the 70th birthday celebrations of the Italian composer. Zad Moultaka, Martín Matalón, Javier Torres Maldonado, Oscar Strasnoy, Arthur Kampela, Dino Saluzzi, Gualtiero Dazzi, Félix Ibarrondo, Ramón Lazkano, Ahmed Essyad, Fuminori Tanada and Atanas Ourkouzounov, among others, wrote pieces for him.

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His discography – ECM New Series, Naïve and Kairos a.o – includes first recordings of pieces by Berio (Chemins V for guitar & orchestra), Francesconi (A Fuoco for guitar & ensemble), Moultaka (Hanbleceya for guitar & ensemble), Ibarrondo, Maresz, Mantovani and Cassadó, and has been awarded with the Grand Prix du Disque of the Académie Charles Cros, the italian Amadeus Prize, the RTL Classique d’Or, and were designed as Best Early Music recording by the Neue Musik Zeitung in Germany and Best Classical Music recording of the year by Readings in Australia. El Cuchi bien temperado, dedicated to the music of Gustavo Leguizamón, found a hugh resonance in the international press and was selected as one of the Best 100 Recordings of 2015 (all genres) by the american journalist Ted Gioia.

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Pablo Márquez teaches at the Hochschule für Musik of Basel, and is one of the most sought-after personalities to give master-classes all around the world. He received in Buenos Aires the Konex Prize for his career and he is since 2006 Honorary Citizen of the City of Salta.

Roger Helou was born in Buenos Aires in 1978. He realized early on that he had a passionate interest in improvising in various styles of popular music. Since then, he has devoted himself to studying arranging and practicing traditional tango.

At the “Conservatorio Manuel de Falla” he studied piano and organ with Enrique Rimoldi. In 1998 he moved to Europe to the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, where he specialized in medieval keyboard instruments and baroque music with Jean Claude Zehnder.

He then turned back to tango and founded the tango orchestra “SILENCIO” in 2001, of which he is the leader, pianist and arranger. He celebrates successes at tango festivals all over Europe.

In Buenos Aires, Roger Helou was part of the legendary Cuarteto Cedrón as an arranger and pianist. His work with Juan Cedrón has been recorded in various CD productions (2004-2016).
As an orchestral arranger, he has written works for various productions, including the Thüringer Symphoniker, the Sinfónica Patagonia and the Orquesta Nacional de Música Argentina “Juan de Dios Filiberto”.

Federico Bosco completed his piano studies with distinction at the Turin Conservatory under Claudio Voghera and continued his studies with Andrea Lucchesini in Pinerolo, Filippo Gamba in Padua and Adrian Oetiker in Basel. He also studied conducting at the Basel University of Music with Rodolfo Fischer, who invited him to be his assistant for Buenos Aires Lirica.

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He always dedicated himself to chamber music, his preferred discipline. He was honored by the Basel University of Applied Sciences in 2018 for his consistently outstanding achievements and his great and unwavering commitment to serving the students and the university. He won 1st prizes at the “Salieri-Zinetti Chamber Music Competition” in Verona, the “Sandro Fuga Competition” in Turin and the “Orpheus Competition” in Bern.

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In 2006, he made his debut with the Swiss Youth Symphony Orchestra in the Paul Klee Auditorium in Bern (Mozart's Jeunehomme) and a year later with the Basel Symphony Orchestra (Bartók 1). He performed with the Orchestra of the Turin Conservatory and the Philharmonic Orchestra of the Theater für Niedersachsen Hildesheim/Hannover. As a soloist and chamber musician he has given recitals throughout Europe.

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Federico Bosco is in great demand as a musical partner and accompanist. Regularly invited to festivals, master classes and competitions, he plays with musicians such as Nora Chastain, Hariolf Schlichtig, Danjulo Ishizaka, Daniel Gaede, Silvia Simionescu, Troels Svane, Conradin Brotbek, Adelina Oprean, Francis Gouton, Igor Keller, Beatriz Blanco, Lisa Rieder. He took part in master classes with musicians such as Leonidas Kavakos, Steven Isserlis, Philippe Griffin, Jean-Jacques Kantorow and singers such as Margreet Honig, Thomas Allen, Christine Schäfer, Michaela Schuster and Christiane Iven.

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He has appeared on renowned stages such as the Lucerne Festival, the Gstaad Menuhin Festival, the Salzburg Chamber Music Festival, the Auditorium and Palau de la Música in Barcelona, the Auditorium Nacional in Madrid, the Fondazione Lingotto Musica in Turin, the Rossini Theater in Pesaro, the Teatro Calderón in Valladolid, the Granada Festival, the Swiss Chamber Music Festival in Adelboden, the Malta International Arts Festival and others.

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In 2016, he released his first CD with cellist Beatriz Blanco, which contains the complete works for cello and piano by Chopin and unpublished pieces by his friend Franchomme. In 2022, the duo released their second album, with works by Hindemith, Debussy and Webern.

Federico Bosco worked for two seasons at the Theater für Niedersachsen Hannover as an assistant and conductor and for opera productions at the Theater St. Gallen and with the Basel Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Giovanni Antonini.

Since 2018, he has been a supervisor for keyboard instruments at the Basel University of Music, leads the workshop In and around the piano and since 2023, he has coordinated the very popular concert series of the piano specialist group “Mittagskonzerte”.

Maxime is just as ease playing in a big orchestra as he is with a small group of musicians. He continues to push his work further and further, probing tango and exploring various forms of improvisation… and composition too. He is fond of the relationship he has with tango dancing and with the dancers onstage. Certain projects he collaborates on require the musicians to become actors and to develop their stage presence. Maxime enjoys this challenge, and is involved both in theatre andperformance art. He likes playing offbeat music, whilst keeping a traditional touch to hisstyle.

Maxime’s craving to play with other musicians and to explore other artistic spheres, combined with his sensitivity to the world around him, makes his music poignant and radiant.

Born in 1983 in Puy en Velay (France), Maxime began playing music at the age of six. He started playing the accordian when he was seven. At the age of eighteen he discovered tango and the bandoneon, thanks to Hervé ESQUIS. He immediately felt that this form of music and this unusual instrument were both absolutely essential to him as a musician.

He continued studying music at Saint-Etienne’s music academy alongside Philippe BOURLOIS, the two men forging a close relationship throughout Maxime’s music studies and right into his professional career as a confirmed musician. He obtained his music diploma (DEM) and went on to be nominated as laureate in 2009 amongst the gold medalists before perfecting his music studies with an advanced diploma in 2010.

He then continued training in musicology, music analysis and composition, and he wrote a dissertation on Igor STRAVINSKY'S «Rite of Spring».

Maxime has participated in Master Classes with renowned musicians such as Daniel BREL (Bandoneon / Tango), William SABATIER (Tango / Bandoneon), Marcel LOEFFLER (Jazz / Accordeon) and the internationally renowned accordeon concert artist, Yuri SHISHKIN.

He has also performed in "The Threepenny" Opera (Kurt WEILL) at Tours’ Grand Theatre.

For four years he played the accordion with the group DoÏna Quintet, performing jazz, klezmer, tango and improvised music. They released an album in May 2011 : "Cerno More".

Maxime has been playing the bandoneon with the group "Roulotte Tango" since 2006, directed by Julien BLONDEL. With them he has toured abroad to Germany, Turkey, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Russia, Luxembourg and the overseas territories of France. As a member of the group "Roulotte Tango", Maxime regularly collaborates with tango dancers. In 2011 he travelled to South Korea with the dancer / choreographer Odile GHEYSENS/in-SENSO to perform an improvised danse and music piece: "PAVOT Tango Addict".

He played in the "Gran Tipica Paris" with the pianist Roger HELOU and performs with thevery in-vogue tango orchestra, "Silbando".

Maxime is in a new project the "Cuarteto Entre Dos", for milongas and concerts (France, Poland and Italy).

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He played as a solist with the "Symphonic Orchestra of the Opera of Saint-Étienne"