VOICES Festival: OB AUS LUFT

Maja Bader is an extraordinarily versatile soprano from Lucerne, where she studied with Barbara Locher. Artistically, she was influenced by master classes and lessons with Malcolm Walker, Thomas Hampson, Sarah Maria Sun, Wolfgang Rihm or Bernhard Lang, among others. She has appeared on the opera stage at the Lucerne theatre and the Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg.
and Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg and gave concerts at many international festivals. As lead singer of the band Ohohohs she performed several concerts at the Fusion Festival Berlin. In 2021 she won, among others, the singing competition Elvirissima. She is a scholarship holder of the Aebi Lüthy and Thyll-Dürr Foundation.

Leonhard Dering, pianist from Tomsk with German, Russian and Latvian roots, grew up in Coburg and studied piano with Alla Schatz, Lev Natochenny and Konstantin Lifschitz. Both as a soloist and as a chamber music partner, he is a guest at festivals throughout Europe. Many composers have dedicated new works to him. Collaborations with important directors and actors have led him to musical theatre productions at leading German theatres and to the Berlin theatretreffen. As a curator
he is in charge of several concert series in Frankfurt am Main and Basel.

Bass-baritone Nicholas Isherwood has long been a leading interpreter of new music. He performs at major international festivals and prestigious opera houses. He has worked with conductors such as William Christie, Peter Eötvös, Zubin Mehta, Kent Nagano and David Robertson, and composers such as Elliott Carter, George Crumb, Hans Werner Henze, György Kurtág, Olivier Messiaen, Giacinto Scelsi, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Iannis Xenakis. He gives master classes at the Paris Conservatoire, the
Mozarteum Salzburg and is professor of voice and chamber music at the Montbéliard Conservatory.

The musician Marina Khorkova lives and works in Berlin. After her training as a pianist, she studied composition at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory and with Prof. Caspar Johannes Walter at the Stuttgart University of Music and Performing Arts. In 2014, she conducted research on "Structure and Sound of Multitones of Prepared Piano Strings" at the Basel Music Academy. In 2017, she was awarded the Berlin-Rheinsberg Composition Prize. Khorkova's works have been performed at numerous festivals
worldwide and interpreted by New York Philharmonic, Klangforum Wien, Trio Accanto, ascolta and Kairos Quartet, among others.

The internationally acclaimed poet and novelist Maria Stepanova was born in Moscow. Stepanova's poetry has had a lasting influence on contemporary Russian literature and has re-popularized the traditional ballad as a poetic genre. Her works have been translated into English, Hebrew, Spanish, Italian, German, Finnish, French and other languages. In 2022 she was awarded the prize of the Leipzig Book Fair.