Felsberga & Eckhaut

The Latvian soprano Katrīna Paula FELSBERGA made her debut as Adina in Donizetti‘s L'elisir d'amore at the Latvian National Opera at the start of the 2024/25 season. She has previously performed at the Latvian National Opera in roles such as Zerlina in Mozart‘s Don Giovanni and Giannetta in Donizetti‘sL'elisir d'amore. In 2024, she was honored with the Latvian Great Music Award as "Young Artist of the Year," the highest state accolade in Latvia‘s music industry. Katrīna has also performed with the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra, Sinfonietta Riga, and the Liepaja Symphony Orchestra.

Felsberga is equally dedicated to the Lied and chamber music genres. As an alumna of the Lied Academy at the Heidelberger Frühling festival, led by Thomas Hampson, she has given recitals at the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin with Graham Johnson and Malcolm Martineau, as well as at the Heidelberger Frühling Liedfestival, where she participated in an experimental Lied.LAB focusing on Western and Eastern cultural intersections. Her 2024 highlights include a solo recital at Rachmaninoff‘s Villa Senar in Lucerne, a performance at the Konzerthaus Berlin with organist Iveta Apkalna, and participation in the Kissinger Sommer festival‘s LiederWerkstatt.

A passionate advocate for contemporary music, Felsberga has premiered and commissioned works by composers such as Oscar Bianchi, Christian Jost, and Jēkabs Jančevskis, among others. She recently performed with Ensemble Modern in Stuttgart and with Ensemble l'Itinéraire at the IRCAM in Paris.

In 2020, she was a finalist in the Bundeswettbewerb Gesang. Katrīna has also participated in the academy of the LIEDBasel festival, the Gstaad Menuhin Festival Vocal Academy, and the Lotte Lehmann Akademie for young opera singers. Born in Riga, Latvia, she studied at the Riga Cathedral Choir School, where she earned a diploma in classical singing and choir conducting, and holds a bachelor‘s degree from the University of the Arts Berlin.

Among the highlights of the 2024/2025 season, French pianist Justine Eckhaut will serve as the artistic director of the berlied Festival, a lied festival in Berlin. She will record an album with mezzo-soprano Coline Dutilleul for the label Musique en Wallonie, dedicated to the music of Belgian composer Lucie Vellère, and will perform, among others, a recital at the LIEDBasel Festival. This year, Justine Eckhaut has been invited to residencies at the Fondation Singer-Polignac in Paris and the Institut Français in Berlin.

https://felsberga.com

Justine Eckhaut studied piano with Florent Boffard and lied, opera and chamber music with David Selig at the CNSMD (Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse) in Lyon, as well as with Björn Lehmann (piano) and Eric Schneider (lied) at the University of the Arts in Berlin. She has performed at venues such as the Berlin Philharmonic, the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, the Bregenz Festival, France Musique, the Conservatorio Nacional de Música in Mexico, and the Oriental Art Center in Shanghai.

In 2020, she founded the berlied Festival, which has so far produced three series of song recitals with original and interdisciplinary programming, receiving high praise from the press. In 2025, Berlied will offer eight concerts and a panel discussion.

From 2019 to 2021, she was invited by Thomas Hampson to participate in the Lied Academy of the Heidelberger Frühling Festival. She is the pianist member of Trio Dara, which also includes soprano Heather Newhouse and alto Anthea Pichanick, and a member of Let me LIED you, an interdisciplinary project led by soprano Amanda Becker. In addition, she regularly performs with singers including Katrina Paula Felsberga, Vizma Zvaigzne, Philipp Mayer, Frederic Jost and Sara Gouzy.

Since 2019, she has been a staff member in the vocal department at the University of the Arts (UdK) Berlin. Since 2022, she has also been the pianist and coach of the children’s choir at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden (Berlin), under the direction of Vinzenz Weissenburger and of the Berliner Mädchenchor (Berlin girls choir school), under the direction of Patrizia von Palubitski.

Passionately involved in ensemble work and contemporary music, she regularly collaborates with the Kammerensemble Neue Musik (KNM) Berlin. She is a prizewinner of the international piano competition in Collioure and is supported by Adami (the French organization for artist support). In 2024, she received a scholarship from the Richard Wagner Association Berlin.

Justine Eckhaut speaks fluent French, English, and German and is deeply passionate about the close connection between poetry and music. She lives in Berlin.

https://www.justineeckhaut.com