Trio Cosmopolitan

The Trio Cosmopolitan came together in this line-up in autumn 2007; here is some information about the musicians:

The pianist Michèle Gurdal (her father Belgian, her mother a Japanese artist) completed her studies at the Conservatoire Royal de Bruxelles in piano, chamber music and music history with the Diplôme de Premier Prix, and then studied in Hanover, Zurich and Detmold with Karl-Heinz Kämmerling, Homero Francesch and Anatol Ugorski.
Since 2005 she has been a scholarship holder of the “International Piano Academy Lake Como”, where she works with, among others, Dimitri Bashkirov, Leon Fleisher and Menahem Pressler.
Michèle Gurdal has won numerous national and international competitions and scholarships (e.g. 1st Prize “Concours national de musique de Belgique”, 1st Prize “Yamaha Stiftung Utrecht”, 1st Prize “Internationaler Klavierwettbewerb Grotrian-Steinweg”) and has performed as a soloist and chamber musician in Europe, Canada and the USA since the age of nine.

The violinist Angela Jaffé comes from a family of musicians and studied in Berlin at the Berlin University of the Arts and at the Hanns Eisler School of Music with Thomas Brandis and Werner Scholz. Master classes with Igor Ozim, Herman Krebbers, Zakhar Bron and Dorothy DeLay gave her important inspiration. She was a scholarship holder of the German Academic Scholarship Foundation (“Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes”) and won national and international scholarships and competitions.
Alongside her busy career as a chamber musician and soloist, Angela Jaffé has played, among others, in the Deutsches Sinfonie Orchester Berlin, the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra and the Ensemble Modern Frankfurt, and from 2001 to 2003 as concertmaster of the “musikFabrik NRW” in Cologne.
Since 2005 she has been a member of the Bayerisches Kammerorchester, and since 2007 a member of the
Staatsoper Hannover.

The cellist Imogen Harvey comes from England. After her first cello lessons with Sigma Bucka-Reitz, she began studying in Nice with Paul Tortelier at the age of 16.
Master classes in Geneva (Conservatoire Supérieur de Genève), La Chaux-de-Fonds and Paris followed. She has played, among others, at the Opéra de Nice and with the Orchestre National de Monte-Carlo, and at the age of twenty became assistant principal cellist at the Theater des Westens in Berlin.

In addition to her classical concert work at home and abroad, Imogen Harvey also works in show business.

She has played in international musical productions (“Aida”, “Falco meets Amadeus”) and in productions with artists such as Placido Domingo, José Carreras, Luciano Pavarotti, Söhne Mannheims, Harald Juhnke, Shirley Bassey, Till Brönner, Rolf Kühn, the RIAS Big Band, Udo Jürgens and the Scorpions.