Lumbye Akademiet

María Emilía Garðarsdóttir, also known as Emma, started playing the violin using the Suzuki tradition from the age of three in Reykjavík in Tónskóli Sigursveins. She moved to Denmark in 2018 to study at the Royal Danish Academy of Music. She finished her Bachelors with Elisabeth Zeuthen Schneider, and she is currently enrolled in the Masters program with both Elisabeth, and Frederik Øland. Her professional and competitive experience include being a member of the Icelandic Opera Orchestra, winning a senior award in Nótan competition, and 3rd place in DKDM Azizian competition.

She plays in an Icelandic trio named Tríó Sól that focuses on expanding the horizons of chamber music lovers by playing music that is unknown or contemporary, with fresh creative twists in the performance. She is excited about playing with Copenhagen Phil and being a team player in the synchronized mountain of sound that constitutes an orchestra. The Lumbye Academy is a fantastic opportunity and she can hardly wait to see what she will experience and learn in the next years.

Maria Ismini Anastasiadou is a 24-year-old Greek violinist. She holds a Bachelor’s degree from the Royal Academy of Music (2020) where she studied with Alexander Sitkovetsky and Remus Azoitei, and a Master’s degree from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama (2022), having studied with Levon Chilingirian. She has been the recipient of the Ismini Karter, Athena Award, Stephen Bell Trust, Derek Butler Award, and the Attica Tradition Foundation Scholarship. Maria is a member of the Gustav Mahler Academy and since 2022 a member of the Lumbye Academy. In her free time, Maria enjoys cooking for friends, listening to music and going for long walks.

Born in 2000 in the middle of the Austrian Alps in Tirol I got in touch with music quite early, it started with listening and dancing to typical folk music from my hometown and ended up in an education in violin at the age of 7 followed by a pre-College at University Mozarteum Salzburg with Klara Flieder in 2011. I am currently doing my Bachelor at Mozarteum Salzburg with Prof. Lukas Hagen. Beside that I am a section leader of Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester where I already had the chance to work with Teodor Currentzis, Daniele Gatti, Jukka-Pekka Saraste and Herbert Blomstedt .

Winning the Academist position at Copenhagen Phil was an incredibly happy situation for me. Being a huge fan of Scandinavia, I look forward to Denmark as my first country to live abroad in! I love cooking (especially for others!), reading history books and visiting museums. I look forward to learning new repertoire with Copenhagen Phil, new inputs and the mock-auditions and to making new friends.

Dasha Auer is an Australian violist studying with Henrik Frendin at Malmö Musikhögskolan; prior to that she completed the 3-year scholarship-based Professional Performance Program at the Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM) with Caroline Henbest. Though she has performed solo at the Melbourne Recital Centre, Dasha’s real passion lies in chamber and orchestral music, appreciating the unique inner voice of the viola and its ability to blend with and complement other parts. Dasha is a substitute player with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra and has participated in side-by-side projects with the Tasmanian, Melbourne and West Australian Symphony Orchestras and Australian Chamber Orchestra, the latter two under the direction of Simone Young and Richard Tognetti respectively. Last year while the ANAM orchestra was on tour with Sophie Rowell and Konstantin Shamray, she performed in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Canberra and Adelaide. Outside of music, Dasha is a closet poet and night owl who likes travelling, nature and languages and always carries a pack of cards.

Elena Gómez Calvo started her studies in Málaga, Spain. She was later graduated in Musikene, País Vasco. Currently she’s studying her master’s degree at the Royal Academy of Music in Aarhus under the tutelage of Evdokia Ershova.

She has received lessons by Joaquín Riquelme, Michael Kugel, Paul Silverthorne and Jonathan Brown.

She’s extremely excited about this opportunity with Copenhagen Philharmonic Orchestra to keep learning and growing as a musician.

My name is Julia Sompolińska-Hetman and I am a cellist from Poland. I recently graduated from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London and have been freelancing in the United Kingdom since then.  I was very lucky to play with such amazing orchestras as the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, side by side with the London Symphony Orchestra and the Australian Chamber Orchestra. With varied chamber groups I performed at the Wigmore Hall and the London Symphony St. Luke’s.

I love playing in the orchestra and am very excited to learn from the fantastic Copenhagen Phil!  am mostly looking forward to getting to know new perspective, creating music, connecting with people and hopefully gaining new friendships.

In my free time I enjoy either hiking in the mountains, cooking delicious vegan food or taking long naps. I am a newly converted weight-lifter and am quite passionate about it (even if the weights I am lifting are somewhere around 2,5kg).  I absolutely adore all animals, and personally think dogs are great role-models for other species, hopefully one day I will adopt a dog to learn from myself! My Achille’s heel is salted popcorn, the amounts of it I can consume are greatly impressive (and slightly terrifying).

Olga Chwaszczewska was born in Poland in 1996. She left home at the age of 17 to study in Warsaw and Gdańsk. She won several prizes at both solo and chamber music competitions. Since 2018 she lives in Denmark and performs both as orchestra and chamber musician. During the COVID pandemic she formed Absalon Quartet in which she finds herself most at home. Her orchestral experience started with The European Union Youth Orchestra four years ago and since then she has developed a strong interest in the symphonic repertoire.