AudiMaxVocal

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Beautiful voices in a large space: made possible by generous private funding and a newly inaugurated cooperation with the University of Hamburg, the Auditorium Maximum on the neighboring university campus is opening up as a new HfMT concert venue for Lied, Global Art Song and vocal chamber music.

Nora Kazemieh, mezzo-soprano
Simon Yang, tenor
Tanja Becker-Bender, violin
Mariana Popova, piano
Burkhard Kehring, piano

Songs and vocal chamber music by Hugo Wolf, Louis Spohr, Benjamin Britten, William Bolcom and Jake Heggie

Vitae of the singers

NORA KAZEMIEH, mezzo-soprano
The Hamburg mezzo-soprano completed her Bachelor's degree with Deborah Massell in New York and then continued her training with Yvi Jänicke in the Master's Opera program and Burkhard Kehring's Lied class in Hamburg. She received further artistic impulses in master classes with Marek Rzepka, Alfred Brendel, Ulrike Sonntag and Hedwig Fassbender, among others. While still a student, she was a soloist in Vaughan Williams' Serenade to Music at Carnegie Hall and sang the child in Ravel's "L'enfant et les sortilèges" at the Hawaii Performing Arts Festival.

She made her debut at the Staatstheater Wiesbaden in 2023 as the second elf in Dvořák's "Rusalka" and appeared as Siegrune in "Die Walküre" the following season. In a staged production of Handel's oratorio "The Triumph of Time and Truth", she sang the role of Truth as part of the "Oper Oder Spree" festival in summer 2023. At the Hamburg Opernloft, she performed the title role in Richard Strauss' "Rosenkavalier" in 2023. In the 2024/25 season, she made a guest appearance at the Hamburg State Opera as Laura in Verdi's "Luisa Miller" and shortly afterwards made her debut at the Volkstheater Rostock as Hänsel in Humperdinck's "Hänsel und Gretel". This was followed by roles in Peter Shaffer's "Amadeus" and Viktor Åslund's "The Steppenwolf", also in Rostock.
She has been part of the renowned Bayreuth Festival Chorus since 2025. Nora Kazemieh is also in demand as a concert singer and regularly sings works by J. S. Bach, Vivaldi, Mozart and Mendelssohn, among others.

Nora Kazemieh has a great passion for lieder singing. In April 2024, she performed a song recital at the Elbphilharmonie together with Romanian pianist Cosmin Boeru. She was a scholarship holder of the Yehudi Menuhin Live Music Now association in Hamburg and is a prizewinner of the Absalom Foundation Mozart Competition, the Elise Meyer Competition and the Bella Voce Competition in Poland.

Seungwoo Simon Yang, tenor
The young South Korean tenor Seungwoo Simon Yang studied at the University of Music and Drama in Hamburg with Carolyn James. From 2020 to 2023, he was a member of the Hamburg State Opera's International Opera Studio. He has been a member of the ensemble since the 2023/24 season and has appeared on stage there as Arturo (Lucia di Lammermoor), Jaquino (Fidelio), Pong (Turandot) and in his role debut as Nemorino (L'elisir d'amore) as well as Don Ottavio (Don Giovanni), Fenton (Falstaff) and Tamino (Die Zauberflöte) in 2024/25. He also made his debut as Alfredo (La Traviata) at Theater Chemnitz this season.

From the 2025/26 season, he will move to the Landestheater Linz as a permanent member of the ensemble, where roles such as Arnold (Guillaume Tell), Ein Sänger (Der Rosenkavalier) and Ernesto (Don Pasquale) will mark the next step in his artistic development. In 2022 he took part in the Salzburg Festival's Young Singers Project; he returned in 2024 for Thomas' Hamlet and will also be a guest in Salzburg in summer 2025.
He has appeared in numerous concerts in South Korea and Europe. As tenor soloist in Beethoven's 9th Symphony, he made both his US debut with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra under Manfred Honeck at Heinz Hall in 2024 and his Southeast Asian debut under Hans Graf with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra.

Seungwoo Simon Yang has won prizes at numerous competitions in South Korea and Germany. In 2014, he won first prize at the Ewha-Kyunghyang Music Competition, the Shin-Youngok Singing Competition and the Shinhan Music Awards, and in 2018 he won second prize and a special prize at the Maritime Music Awards. In 2020, he won first prizes at the Mozart Competition, the Elise Meyer Foundation Competition and the Gustav Mahler Song Competition at the Hamburg University of Music and Drama. He was a finalist in the International
New Voices Competition 2022.

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