BRQ | Vantaa Festival

Salvat Beca Bach Soloists

Ensemble:

Rita Morais, soprano
Christian Gil-Borrelli, alto
Daniel Thomson, tenor
Ramiro Maturana, bass

RITA MORAIS was born in Braga (Portugal), where she began her musical studies at the Conservatori de Música Calouste Gulbenkian in viola and singing.

Afterwards, she studied singing at the Escola Superior de Música i Arts do Espetaculo (ESMAE) in Porto. She received a scholarship from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation of Lisbon (2016-2018), from the Society of Artists, Performers and Executants of Spain (2020) and from the Victòria dels Àngels Foundation (2020), and completed her academic training at the Master of Lied "Victoria dels Àngels" of the Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya.

She regularly performs concerts and recitals in Portugal and Spain, collaborating with entities such as Casa da Música (Porto, PT), Estudis Victor Córdon/Companhia Nacional de Ballat, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian (Lisboa, PT), Ensemble Eco, Ambaixada de Portugal a Espanya, Cor Nacional d'Espanya (Madrid, ES), Fundació Victòria dels Àngels and Bach Collegium Barcelona.

In the 2021-22 season Morais debuts as a LIFE New Artist at the LIFE Victoria festival and receives the Premi Solista Salvat Beca Bach 2022 from the Salvat Foundation.


After having graduated in medicine and specialised in public Hhealth, CHRISTIAN GIL-BORRELLI put aside his career as a doctor to devote himself exclusively to music in 2016. He entered the Escola Superior de Cant de Madrid where he trained with Cristina Gallardo-Domâs, Pilar Pérez-Íñigo and the repertoire teacher Cristina Presmanes. Finally, he moved to Germany to study with mezzo-soprano María José Montiel at the prestigious Universität der Künste Berlin.

He has been awarded prizes at the Compostela Lírica (2020) and the Concurs Internacional de Cant de Medinaceli (2019) competitions and has been part of the first CRESCENDO generation, a project led by the Teatro Real that encourages promising singers in their emerging musical careers.

He has participated in the programmes of the Teatro Real, Auditorio Nacional, Programación Lírica de la Coruña, Palacio de Festivales de Santander, Auditorio Alfredo Kraus de Gran Canaria, Auditorio de Galicia, the FIOCLE and the SMR de Cuenca. Internationally, Christian Borrelli has performed at the Monteverdi Festival in Cremona and the Bachfest in Leipzig.


DANIEL THOMSON, originally from Melbourne, is an international tenor soloist and chamber singer based in London. In 2009 he graduated with honours in Vocal Performance from the University of Melbourne. In October 2016 he received a scholarship to study a Master in Advanced Vocal Ensemble Studies at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel, which he completed in April 2018.

His studies have focused especially on the performance of music with historical criteria from the 16th to the 19th century. In 2015 and 2016, he spent a couple of months in Canada preparing a recording with rhetorical methods of interpretation under the direction of Professor Robert Toft of the University of Western Ontario. As a result of this collaboration, Daniel's debut solo album Secret Fires of Love is available on Spotify and iTunes and was recently played on the BBC.

In February 2019, Daniel made his solo debut at Wigmore Hall alongside Dame Emma Kirkby to celebrate her 70th birthday. In October 2020, Daniel has been learning the original English pronunciation through the InVocare ensemble in collaboration with David Crystal, Peter Van Heyghen, REMA, AMUZ, BOZAR and Culture for Europe.


The baritone RAMIRO MATURANA is an alumnus of the Accademia Teatro alla Scala (2017-2019). He entered its programme in September 2017 and made his debut at the Teatro alla Scala in the 2017/18 season as Giovane Cantore in the opera Ti vedo, ti sento, mi perdo (world premiere), or playing the role of Perückenmacher in Ariadne auf Naxos. In the following season 2018/19 he performed the roles of Belcore in L'elisir d'amore, Marullo in Rigoletto, and Spinelloccio in the production of Gianni Schicchi, directed by Woody Allen.

He has also worked at the Theatre Athénée in Paris, the Teatro Rossini in Pesaro, the Innsbrucker Festwochen der Alten Musik, the Grand Théâtre de Genève, the Teatro Municipal de Santiago - Ópera Nacional de Chile and the Theatre Apollo, NY. Alhora has been soloist with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Chile in works such as Britten's War Requiem, Beethoven's 9th Symphony, Carmina Burana, Messiah, Passió de Sant Joan.


The Salvat Bach Grant seeks to further the training and promotion of young soloist singers within the sphere of the vocal music of J.S. Bach, annually awarding four different grants (soprano, alto, tenor and bass). The project was started by BZM Foundation and nowadays is led and sponsored by Salvat Foundation under the artistic direction and with the cooperation of two other institutions: BCB Association and Bachcelona Foundation.

The project began in 2014 and has been marked by an important pedagogic aspect. In this sense, it has been backed by such well-known soloists as the countertenor Carlos Mena, the soprano Katharine Fuge, the baritone Stephan MacLeod, the tenor Benjamin Bruns, and the soprano Miriam Feuersinger.

Rita Morais, Daniel Thomson, Ramiro Maturana & Christian Gil-Borrelli
Rita Morais, Daniel Thomson, Ramiro Maturana & Christian Gil-Borrelli

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