Gulbenkian Orchestra Soloists
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Date
- / Cancelled / Sold out
Location
Grand Auditorium Calouste Gulbenkian FoundationOnline priority-booking is closed.
In-person ticket collection is available two hours prior to the event (available seats: 300).
In-person ticket collection is available two hours prior to the event (available seats: 300).
- Violin
- Viola
- Cello
- Diogo Pereira Clarinet
- Bassoon
- French horn
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Zachary Spontak
Violin
Violinist Zachary Spontak is an artist and cultural advocate, building connections between music and people around the world. Zachary is Principal 2nd Violinist of the Orquestra Gulbenkian in Lisbon, Portugal, and travels frequently to perform as violin soloist and chamber musician. Called a “natural leader”, Zachary collaborates with artists such as Itzhak Perlman, Midori, Sir Simon Rattle, and Maxim Vengerov. Zachary won First Prize at the Carnegie Hall GMP International Competition, Pro Artists International Competition, and Fischoff Chamber Music Competition, and was named Young Alaskan Artist of the Year in 2015. He has performed with the London Symphony Orchestra, Houston Symphony, Orquestra do Algarve, and Fairbanks Symphony, among others.
Zachary is an avid performer of new music, promoting the creation of art to search for beauty in our global society. He works with renowned composers such as Wolfgang Rihm, John Corigliano, Péter Eötvös, and Matthias Pintscher.
Zachary engages in music outreach, recognizing that many people worldwide do not have access to musical training. From 2016-2018, he worked in Buenos Aires, Argentina, performing and teaching in disadvantaged areas of the city. Zachary has been a teaching artist with Musaid, an organization that connects musicians across the globe through educational exchanges designed to inspire individual and community transformation. Zachary is Director of Education at the Anchorage Chamber Music Festival, which brings artists and students together for intensive learning and performing each summer in Anchorage, Alaska.
Zachary has a Master of Performance from the Royal College of Music in London, under the mentorship of renowned violinist Detlef Hahn. Other mentors include Paul Kantor, Roland and Almita Vamos, Dr. Gail Johansen, and Jean Krause.
Zachary lives in Lisbon with his wife Luísa, a classical singer, and son James.
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Nuno Soares
Viola
Nuno Soares was born in 1994, in Chaves, but grew up in Vila Praia de Âncora, in the Viana do Castelo region, where he would start his musical studies at the age of 12, at the Escola Profissional de Música de Viana do Castelo. In 2006 he would be part of Sergey Arutyunyan’s violin class, but in 2008 he would change his path and become a violist, under the tutelage of Rafael Cutiño.
Between 2012 and 2015 he would do his bachelor’s degree at the Academia Nacional Superior de Orquestra da Metropolitana with Paul Wakabayashi, and in 2018 he attended an open course with Samuel Barsegian at Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa. During these years, he would consolidate his career as an orchestral musician both in Portugal and abroad, collaborating with the Orquestra Metropolitana de Lisboa, the Orquestra Gulbenkian, the Orquesta Filharmónica Ciudad de Pontevedra, the North West Opera, among others. In 2022 he won the position of Viola tutti in Orquestra do Algarve and in 2023 he won the audition for the place he currently occupies, as a Viola tutti in Orquestra Gulbenkian.
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Raquel Reis
Cello
Raquel Reis studied cello with Isabel Boiça at the Conservatório de Música de Aveiro Calouste Gulbenkian and completed her degree at the Academia Nacional Superior de Orquestra, where her teacher was Paulo Gaio Lima. She received first prizes in the Caldas da Rainha Interpretation Competition, the Samuel and Elinor Thaviu Endowed Scholarship Competition in String Performance (Northwestern University) and the Winnetka Music Club Scholarship.
In 2007, she completed her Masters in String Performance at the Northwestern University School of Music in Chicago, with Hans Jensen. She was awarded scholarships by the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.
Raquel Reis was a member of the European Union Youth Orchestra and the Spira Mirabilis Orchestra and has performed solo with the Gulbenkian Orchestra, the Orquestra Académica Metropolitana and the Orquestra Clássica de Espinho. She is a member of the Trio Pessoa, with which she recorded the CD Pessoa, dedicated to Portuguese music. She also recorded the CD of Portuguese and Brazilian music, Mundo Grande. She has been a member of the Gulbenkian Orchestra since September 2007.
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Raquel Saraiva
Bassoon
Raquel Saraiva began her bassoon studies in Coimbra with José Pedro Figueiredo. She graduated from ESMAE, where she studied with H. Kesteman and Pedro Silva. She completed her Master’s degree at Lübeck Musikhochschule with Pierre Martens. As part of the Erasmus programme, she attended the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo, where she studied with Dag Jensen. She is currently studying for a postgraduate degree at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg with Marco Postinghel.
She has played with various orchestras, including: Junge Deutsche Philharmonie, European Union Youth Orchestra, Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester, Bamberg Symphony, Philharmonisches Orchester der Hansestadt Lübeck, NDR Symphony Hamburg, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Munich Chamber Orchestra, Munich Radio Orchestra, Bavarian Radio Orchestra, Portuguese Chamber Orchestra and the Gulbenkian Orchestra. She has been an academician of the SWR Stuttgart Radio Symphony and a Gulbenkian Foundation grant-holder. She has won awards at the Prémio Jovens Músicos (Young Musicians Award), the 5th International Academic Oboe and Bassoon Competition Łódź and the Estoril National Competition. From 2014 to 2018 she was Soloist B in the orchestra of the Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz in Munich. She has been 2nd Soloist of the Gulbenkian Orchestra since 2018.
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Antonia Chandler
French horn
Antonia Chandler began playing the horn at the age of 11 in her hometown of Seattle, Washington, USA, where she studied with Bob DeCou and Mike Hettwer. When she was 18 years old she moved to Ohio to study with Roland Pandolfi at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, where she earned a Bachelor of Music degree with Kappa Lambda Honors. She then moved to Connecticut to study with Bill Purvis at the Yale School of Music, where she earned the degrees of Master of Music and Master of Musical Arts. During her studies, she performed with the New World Symphony, the New Haven Symphony, and the Princeton Symphony, as well as attended many summer music festivals including Music Academy of the West, Round Top Festival Institute, Atlantic Music Festival, and Lake George Music Festival.
After graduating from Yale, Antonia moved to London where was a horn fellow with the chamber orchestra Southbank Sinfonia, and for the 2021-2022 season she also performed with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra as 2nd horn trialist.
An avid chamber musician, she has toured with the Frisson Ensemble, a nine-piece chamber ensemble based in New York City and performed as a soloist with the Silver Bay String Quartet (NY) and the Oberlin Sinfonietta. She also enjoys historical performance on baroque and classical horns and was recently the baroque horn soloist in a performance of Bach B Minor Mass with the Parliament Choir in London. She has performed in venues such as Carnegie Hall, Vienna Musikverein, the Philharmonie de Paris and the Palau de la Música Catalana in Barcelona.
Antonia won the audition for low horn soloist in Orquestra Gulbenkian in September 2021, and moved to Lisbon later that year. She has been a permanent member of the orchestra since November 2022.
Ludwig van Beethoven
Septet in E flat major, op. 20
Richard Strauss
Till Eulenspiegel einmal anders! (arr. Franz Hasenöhrl)
The Gulbenkian Orchestra consists of musicians of great technical and artistic quality. Throughout the season, they also perform in free chamber music concerts, thus emerging from the anonymity of their roles within the orchestra. While making themselves much more visible, they also make a considerable contribution to a greater appreciation of chamber music as a whole, from the standard repertoire to the premieres of new works.
Sponsor Gulbenkian Music
The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation reserves the right to collect and keep records of images, sounds and voice for the diffusion and preservation of the memory of its cultural and artistic activity. For further information, please contact us through the Information Request form.
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