The ARTISTS of the festival

Gisele Blondeau was born and raised in Winnipeg, Canada, where she began her first double bass lessons at the age of eight. She went on to study double bass with Eric Hansen at the University of Manitoba where she obtained a bachelor’s degree in Music Performance in 1998. She moved to Pittsburgh, U.S.A. to further her studies on a full tuition scholarship, where she assisted the bass professor, Jeff Turner, principal of the Pittsburgh Symphony, and achieved a master’s degree in the year 2000. Along with teaching privately and at the University, she toured around the world with various youth orchestras with conductors such as Kurt Masur, Zubin Mehta, Yakov Kreizberg, Franz-Paul Decker, Helmut Rilling and others. She developed an interest in the German music culture and enrolled in the School of Music in Munich and later also in Leipzig, achieving the ‘Konzertexam’ performance degree. She played as a substitute in many orchestras in Germany, and obtained her first full-time position in the Munich Symphony Orchestra. In 2004, she successfully auditioned for the position of Principal Bass of the “Philharmonie Südwestfalen” in Hilchenbach. She started teaching bass in the faculty of music at the University of Siegen in 2005. She won the audition for the position of Principal double bass of the Bochum Symphony in 2009, where she still plays today.