In addition to her career as a performer, Myung-Wha Chung has also taught at the Mannes School of Music and at the Korea National University of Arts. She performs and teaches children at the Maestra Chung Myung-Wha Music Village in Pyeongchang and elsewhere in Korea. She has commissioned and premiered many original works, mostly by Korean composers. In recent years, she has directed the Pyeongchang (formerly Great Mountains) Music Festival and has organised festivals in Korea as well as in the US, Germany, and Austria. Her solo recordings and her recordings as part of the Chung Trio (with her sister, the violonist Kyung-Wha Chung, and her brother, the conductor and pianist Myung-Whun Chung) have been released by the Deutsche Grammophon, Decca, and EMI labels. She has been a guest at many well-known festivals, such as the Lucerne Festival, the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, the Spoleto Festival, and the Tivoli Festival, and has performed all over the world, including at the White House, at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna, and in the United Nations General Assembly Hall. She trained at the Juilliard School under Leonard Rose and later at the University of Southern California under Gregor Piatigorsky. Myung-Wha Chung has been a soloist, chamber music partner, and teacher for more than sixty years. He is an artist in residence at both the Philharmonie de Paris and the Wiener Konzerthaus. This season sees him perform with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, the Munich Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic, the Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Cleveland Orchestra. His current projects include collaborations with Lera Auerbach, Richard Dubugnon, Danny Elfman, and Thierry Escaich. Devoted to exploring and expanding the cello repertoire, he performs a large range of pieces and new works every year. During the summer of 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, Gautier Capuçon brought music directly into the lives of families across France with his musical odyssey, Un été en France. This year, he launched his own foundation to support talented young musicians at the beginning of their careers, and to increase his engagement with young artists. He performs internationally with many leading conductors and instrumentalists and is the founder and leader of the ‘Classe d’Excellence de Violoncelle’ at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris and a passionate ambassador for the Association Orchestre à l’École, which introduces thousands of children to classical music in schools throughout France. Gautier Capuçon is a true twenty-first century ambassador for the cello. Since 2019, he is President of the Jury of the Queen Elisabeth Competition’s instrumental sessions : Violin 2019, Piano 2021, and Cello 2022. In 2014 he received the title of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in France, for his contribution to cultural and artistic relations between Belgium and France.

Particularly attentive to the training of young talents, Gilles Ledure is on the Board of Directors of the Queen Elisabeth Competition and the Koninklijk Conservatorium Brussel and is a member of the Artistic Council of the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel. In 2003 he founded Tactus (Young Composers’ Forum), the non-profit organization that supports young composers in the creation and performance of orchestral works in collaboration with various cultural institutions.

In 2006 he headed abroad, first to Luxemburg to lead the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg and shortly afterwards to France, where he was artistic director of the Orchestre National de Lille and the Lille Piano Festival until 2011. He started his career in the music world in Belgium at La Monnaie/De Munt and with the Belgian National Orchestra. Since 2011 he is the general manager of the Brussels cultural house Flagey. Gilles Ledure (° 1970, Leuven - Belgium) studied musicology at the universities of Leuven and Paris.

Mannes school of music cello repertoire