Guilherme Filipe Sousa

Guilherme Filipe Costa e Sousa was born in Coimbra, Portugal. He completed his bachelor of music in oboe performance after studies with Ricardo Lopes at the Escola de Música e Artes do Espectáculo in Porto. He then completed a master of music degree with Diethelm Jonas at the Lübeck Music Academy. Both as a soloist and chamber musician, Guilherme Sousa has won various competitions, including first prizes at the music competition of the Portuguese Radio RTP “Prémio Jovens Músicos” in the solo and chamber music category, the first prize at the National Wind Instrument Competition in Terras de La-Sallete, the second prize at the 51st Possehl Music Award and the third prize at the 5th Józef Ciepłucha International Oboe Competition in Łódź, Poland. In Portugal, he was named Musical Newcomer of the Year in 2013. From 2015 to 2017 he was a member of the orchestral academy of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, performing concerts in Germany and abroad under conductors such as Mariss Jansons, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Kent Nagano and Sir John Elliot Gardiner. In 2017 Guilherme Sousa was appointed associate principal oboe at the Duisburg Philharmonic Orchestra. He then became principal oboist of the Düsseldorf Symphonic Orchestra at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein from 2017 to 2020. In 2020 he won the position of principal oboist at the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra.

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Patrick Hollich

Patrick Hollich learnt to play the clarinet with Prof. Anton Hollich, then studied at the Stuttgart University of Music and completed his master's degree at the Berlin University of the Arts. He won first national prizes at "Jugend musiziert" and has won several prizes at prestigious competitions, including the international Lions Club Competition, the 49th Markneukirchen International Instrumental Competition and the Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Competition in Berlin. From 2014 to 2015 he was a Karajan Foundation Academician with the Berliner Philharmoniker and since 2015 he has been Deputy Principal Clarinet of the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra.

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José Silva

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Jan Polle

Jan Polle was born in Limburg in 1997. He first began taking horn lessons at the Limburg Music School at the age of eight. From October 2012 to September 2015 he was a junior student of Esa Tapani at the Frankfurt am Main Academy of Music and Performing Arts. There, he also began his bachelor studies in 2015. Jan Polle was a winner of the competition “Jugend musiziert” several times, including a prize at the federal level in 2012. He took master courses with Johannes Hinterholzer, the ensemble German Brass and Ensemble Modern (“epoch f”). From 2018 to 2020 Jan Polle was a member of the Kassel State Orchestra’s academy. He also gained professional experience as a substitute principal horn player at the State Orchestra of Lower Saxony in Hanover and elsewhere. Jan Polle has been a member of the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra since 2020 and has been deputy principal horn since 2022.

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Daniel Cho

Daniel Cho was born in New Jersey (USA) and began playing the violin in South Korea at the age of six. He received his bachelor's degree from The Juilliard School in the class of Hyo Kang and David Chan. He then continued his studies with Kolja Blacher at the Hanns Eisler School of Music in Berlin. He won numerous international competitions, including the Max Rostal Competition 2019, in which he received the top prize. As a soloist he played with orchestras such as the Hamburger Camerata, the Bucheon Philharmonic Orchestra and Sejong Soloists. In 2010 he made his New York debut in the Weill Hall of Carnegie Hall, presented by the Korea Music Foundation, and in 2013 he made his European debut at the Musée du Louvre in Paris as part of the "Concerts du Jeudi". He also appears as a member of Sejong Soloists and has worked closely with artists such as Gil Shaham, Cho-Liang Lin and Vadim Repin. As concertmaster he played with The Juilliard Orchestra, the Verbier Festival Orchestra and the Budapest Festival Orchestra. From the 2021/22 season he joined the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra as first concertmaster.

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Iris Icellioglu

Born in Izmir, violist Iris Icellioglu discovered her passion for the viola at the age of nine. She began her studies at the Dokuz Eylül College of Music in Izmir with Pinar Dinçer and continued with Prof. Dr. Çetin Aydar and Prof. Hartmut Lindemann. She completed her bachelor's degree with distinction in 2016. She began her master's degree with Prof. Roland Glassl and later continued it with Prof. Pauline Sachse at the Lübeck University of Music, where she successfully graduated. She has had the opportunity to take part in chamber music masterclasses with eminent musicians such as Emile Cantor, Ruşen Güneş, Ron Ephrat, Máté Szücs and Eberhard Feltz. During her studies in Germany, she was awarded the Yehudi Menuhin Live Music Now Scholarship with three different chamber music groups.
Between 2015 and 2017, she was a permanent member of the Karsiyaka Chamber Orchestra. She was later part of the Orchestra Academy of the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra and performed as a guest artist with orchestras such as the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra and the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra.
She has performed as a soloist with the Dokuz Eylül Academic Orchestra and the Karsiyaka Chamber Orchestra. As part of the 45th Istanbul Festival, she won the “Festival seeks its young soloist” competition and performed as a soloist with the DESO under the direction of Hakan Şensoy.
Icellioglu has been a permanent member of the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra since 2022. She has worked with conductors such as Jonathan Nott, Vasily Petrenko, Alan Gilbert, Kent Nagano, Vladimir Jurowsky and Ádám Fischer and has performed as an orchestral and chamber musician in world-famous concert halls such as Carnegie Hall, Berlin Philharmonie, Elbphilharmonie, Suntory Hall and Sala São Paulo.

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Clara Grünwald

Clara Grünwald was born in Munich in 1990, receiving her first cello lessons at the age of six. From 2009 to 2015 she studied with Martin Ostertag at the Karlsruhe Music Academy and attended master courses with Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt, Wolfgang Boettcher, Guido Schiefen, Thomas Demenga and Morten Zeuthen. Clara Grünwald held scholarships from the Heinrich Hertz Society (2009) and from Yehudi Menuhin’s “Live Music Now” (2012). She gathered orchestral experience as a substitute of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra and as a member of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra’s academy. Since 2015 she has been associate principal cellist of the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra.

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Felix von Werder

Felix von Werder was born in 1990, grew up in Kiel and started playing the double bass when he was seven. After influential years in the National Youth Orchestra of Germany, he began studying double bass right after graduating from secondary school in 2009; Ekkehard Beringer (NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra) was his teacher at the Hanover Academy of Music, Theatre and Media. His studies were complemented by master courses with Dorin Marc, Esko Laine and Nabil Shehata, among others. He also spent a year at the Janáček Academy in Brno, Czech Republic, in the class of Miloslav Jelínek. During his studies, Felix von Werder held a scholarship of the Joseph Joachim Academy of the NDR Radio Philharmonic. Even during his last year of studies, he received an engagement there for the 2017/18 season before joining the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra in October 2018. He has played as a substitute in Göttingen and Kiel, at the Hanover and Braunschweig State Theatres and at the Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne. A sought-after and passionate chamber musician, his artistic collaboration with musicians such as Avi Avital is characterized by the wish to expand the double bass literature by unknown works, and to convey these to a larger audience. He finds educational work similarly important and therefore enjoys coaching youth orchestras, for example the Schleswig-Holstein State Youth Orchestra.

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Camille Lemonnier

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