Jovem Orquestra Portuguesa

Chairwoman of the Board of GASAG

Garbage is no work for girls – that bit of prejudice has successfully been refuted up by Vera Gäde-Butzlaff. The lawyer who moved to Berlin from Lower Saxony to study law was Chairwoman of the Board of Berlin’s municipal waste-disposal company BSR for seven years, also getting rid of some “garbage” along the way: her first self-set task on the job was to take part on a cleaning and garbage-collection tour. “In this job, you have to be authentic and show that you value the work of every single coworker” – with those words, she turned her job over to her successor last year, leaving with sympathy for BSR running high among the Berliners, and with fantastic revenues for the company. Instead of resting on her laurels and dedicating herself to one of her favourite pastimes, traveling, she became Chairwoman of the Board of GASAG, Berlin’s Gasworks, in March 2015. And she is a friend of the arts: since 2011 she has been chairwoman of the Friends of the Berlin State Ballet as well. But maybe it will soon be time for a vacation after all – perhaps in Portugal, after she has welcomed and enjoyed the Jovem Orquestra Portuguesa at Young Euro Classic!

© Mario Zgoll

The Portuguese conductor Pedro Carneiro, born in Lisbon in 1975, has pursued a two-track musical career. On the one hand, he is an internationally acclaimed percussionist performing in all the major concert halls between the USA, Japan and Australia. More than 100 world premieres demonstrate his special status as an artist of the musical avant-garde, as do his regular collaborations with the Arditti Quartet, the Tokyo String Quartet and the Chilingirian Quartet. The percussionist has a special flair for musical improvisation, often in combination with live electronics or other innovative technologies. On the other hand, Carneiro has been making a name for himself as a conductor during the past years. The Portuguese Chamber Orchestra (Orquestra de Câmara Portuguesa) was founded at his initiative in 2007 and has its own concert series at the Centro Cultural de Belém (Lisbon). Not least, the Portuguese musician composes orchestral and chamber music and directs the percussion festival “Bang Crash Splash!” in Lisbon.

www.pedrocarneiro.com

The violinist Pedro Lopes, born in Braga in Northern Portugal in 1988, moved to Lisbon in 2006 at the age of 18 to study at the Music Academy, where he specialized both in modern and baroque violin. During the following years Lopes won numerous prizes for young musicians. Today he is a member of the Portuguese Chamber Orchestra (OCP) and has been teaching at the National Conservatory since 2011. In addition, he participates in a master programme for chamber music at the Hanover Music Academy with his ensemble, Trio do Desassossego.

The violist Ricardo Gaspar began his musical training at the age of eight, completing his bachelor’s degree at the Music Academy in Lisbon in 2012 after studies with Pedro Muñoz. He subsequently continued his studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Gaspar was not only a member of the European Union Youth Orchestra, but also reinforced the string group of the London Symphony Orchestra, performing under conductors such as Vladimir Ashkenazy, Pablo Heras-Casado, Bernard Haitink and Valery Gergiev. The violist has won several prizes for young musicians in Portugal. He currently studies at the International Menuhin Academy in Switzerland.