Jury

Professor Rimantas Armonas graduated from the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre in 1975, under the guidance of Prof. Silvija Sondeckienė (a student of Mstislav Rostropovich). He continued his studies at the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory in the class of the Tchaikovsky Competition laureate, Prof. Valentin Feigin. In 1980, he won first prize at the International Cello Competition in Minsk. Since 1978, he has been teaching at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, where he is a professor in the String Instruments Department. From 2011 to 2019, he taught at Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas. Between 1986 and 1988, he taught at the National Institute of Music in Algeria (L’Institut National de Musique d’Algérie). From 2000 to 2011, he was the Head of the String Instruments Department at the Kaunas branch of the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre. Since 2018, he has served as the chair of the Chamber Music Department at the same institution. Rimantas Armonas is one of the most distinguished Lithuanian cellists. In 2018, he received the Culture and Art Prize from the Government of the Republic of Lithuania. He regularly performs as a soloist and as a member of various chamber ensembles. He has performed in Germany, Canada, Japan, France, Austria, the Netherlands, Finland, Spain, Hungary, Singapore, Sweden, Algeria, and other countries. He has participated in prestigious classical and contemporary music festivals in Lithuania and abroad, including the Third International Cello Congress in Kobe, Japan. He has performed with numerous symphony and chamber orchestras in Lithuania and Belarus, including under the baton of S. Sondeckis, M. Dvarionaitė, D. Katkus, J. Domarkas, S. Domarkas, M. Pitrenas, M. Barkauskas (Lithuania); P. Berman (Spain – Italy), O. Grangean (France), N. Engelbrecht and E. Leonov (Belarus), and B. Raisky (Russia). Rimantas Armonas is a member of ARMONAS TRIO and ARMONAS – USS DUO. A concert performed by Armonas Trio at the Lithuanian National Philharmonic Hall on October 3, 2003, was broadcast in 17 countries by Euroradio. Rimantas Armonas conducts masterclasses and interpretive seminars at music colleges in Finland (1991-92), Belarus (1994, 2003, 2004), Latvia (1996, 2015, Academia Baltica’ 97), the Netherlands (2001), France (2010), Germany (2003-2012), Poland (2010-2023), and Sweden (2004, 2006). He has served on the juries of international competitions in Poland, Belarus, Moldova, and Lithuania. His repertoire includes numerous premieres of works by contemporary composers from various countries. He is an active performer of new Lithuanian music and has prepared over 50 world premieres of contemporary Lithuanian composers. He has frequently recorded for Lithuanian and foreign radio stations and has produced numerous recordings in various countries.

 

Joanna Sachryn, a cellist born in Poland, impresses with her expressiveness and personality, which deliberately defies categorisation. Her commanding stage presence and the unique sound of her cello reflect her wide-ranging experience as a chamber musician, soloist, orchestral concertmaster and teacher.

Joanna Sachryn graduated from the Music High School in Szczecin and gained a reputation as a prize-winner in national competitions. She began her studies in Eugeniusz Zboralski’s class at the Academy of Music in Poznań, before continuing in the soloist class of the eminent Professor Gerhard Mantel at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Frankfurt, and with the highly renowned teacher William Pleeth in London, who had taught many famous cellists, including Jacqueline du Pré. She also received further decisive inspiration through her repertoire studies with two Russian masters – Mstislav Rostropovich and Daniil Shafran.

Joanna Sachryn has collaborated with leading European orchestras such as the Philharmonia Orchestra London, the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne, the Munich Philharmonic, Die Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen and The Chamber Orchestra of Europe. As a soloist, she has performed with the Korean Chamber Orchestra, the Wernigerode Chamber Orchestra, the Regensburg Philharmonic Orchestra, the Württembergische Symphoniker, the Oradea State Orchestra, ‘Paul Constantinescu’ Philharmonic Orchestra of Ploiești, Málaga Philharmonic Orchestra and on several occasions as a soloist during the German Radio Chamber Orchestra’s concert tours in China – with conductors such as Martin Fischer-Dieskau, Walter Hilgers, Lior Shambadal, Jin Wang, Ricardo Medeiros, Tetsuro Ban, Dorian Keilhack and Raul Grüneis.

Chamber music is her great passion. Since 1999, she has been the cellist of the renowned Cologne Piano Trio. Together with colleagues from the Vienna Philharmonic, she forms the famous Vienna Cello Ensemble 5+1. In 2020, the world premiere recording of Ferdinand Hiller and Anton Urspruch’s sonatas, Forgotten Treasures, recorded as a duet with the international highly regarded pianist and chamber musician Paul Rivinius, was released, followed in 2023 by their album Meyer Shostakovich; both were enthusiastically received by the media. The renowned Polish composer Krzysztof Meyer dedicated his new Adagio serioso Op. 141 to her. In 2023, she gave the world premiere of Tomasz Skweres’s Paysage Intime, a piece dedicated to her, with the Madrid Festival Orchestra.

She has performed at many of the world’s most prestigious venues and festivals, including: the Alte Oper Frankfurt, Musikverein in Vienna, Royal Festival Hall in London, Cecilia Meirelles Hall in Rio de Janeiro, Kumho Concert Hall, Lotte Concert Hall and Seoul Arts Centre in Seoul, Suntory Hall in Tokyo, Beijing National Centre for the Performing Arts, Orientale Art Centre and Shanghai Symphony Hall, Shenzhen City Hall, Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, Rheingau Music Festival, Menuhin Festival in Gstaad, Shanghai Spring Festival, Liana Issakadze Festival in Georgia, International Cello Festival in Katowice, Poland, Musica Musika Festival Bilbao and Santander Music Festival in Spain.

Joanna Sachryn is a professor of cello at the Yehudi Menuhin School in Qingdao, China; she also lectures at the Akademie für Musik Berlin and serves as a visiting professor at Tongji University in Shanghai and the Central Conservatoire in Beijing. In autumn 2026, she will lead a masterclass at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester and the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. Since 2019 she is member of professor team at Cello Family Festival China – with up to 400–500 participants each year.

 

Justus Grimm received his first introductory cello lessons at the age of five at first from his father, followed by studies with Ulrich Voss, Claus Kanngiesser and later with Frans Helmerson in Stockholm and Cologne. 

He proved his outstanding talent in various competitions. Playing alongside the pianist Florian Wiek, he also won the first prize in the Maria Canals music competition in Barcelona and was also awarded the prize of the German Music Council. 

Justus Grimm’s solo and chamber music performances took him throughout Europe. The beginning of his career in 1993 was marked by his splendid performance as a soloist in the première by Matthias Pintscher’s cello concert “La Metamorfosi di Narciso” with the Hamburg Philharmonic Orchestra and continued to maintain his solo performance in cooperation with many other orchestras, including the English Chamber Orchestra, the London Chamber Orchestra, the Ukrainian National Orchestra, the Lithuanian National Orchestra, the Orchestre Symphonique de la Monnaie, the Bonn Classical Philharmonic or the Brandenburg State Orchestra Frankfurt. 

As part of his performances, Justus Grimm was already a guest in many of the most renowned concert halls in the world like the Berlin Philharmonic, the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, the Cologne Philharmonic, the Theatre du Chatelet in Paris, the Atheneum Bucarest, the Munich Hercules Hall or the Cultural Centre in Lisbon. 

In 2012 his performance of Tchaikovsky’s “Rococo Variations” with the Orchestre Symphonique de la Monnaie conducted by Carlo Rizzi was broadcast live from the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels as part of a TV production. 

Justus Grimm made his remarkable chamber music career together with renowned artists like Abdel Raman El Bacha, Gerard Caussé, Augustin Dumay or Stephen Kovacevich. He accepted invitations to major festivals, including the Ludwigsburg Festspiele, the Festival van Vlaanderen, Festival Musiq3, Lisbon’s Dias da Musica, the Florilegio Salamanca Festival, SoNoRo Romania, Thy Chambermusic Festival, Forte Music Fest Almaty, Storioni Festival Eindhoven, Cantiere Di Montepulciano, Brussel’s Klara Music Festival or the Chiemgau Musikfrühling. 

Besides live recordings by many European radio stations there are already numerous CD records. Worth mentioning here is a CD, Trio Wiek (Christina Fassbender, Justus Grimm and Florian Wiek) with works by Philippe Gaubert, who was awarded a 5/5 rating by the French magazine Diapaison. 

2012 saw the recording with earlier works by George Enescu that was highly acclaimed by the international press and shortly thereafter a complete recording of the chamber music works by Cesar Franck, which was awarded the Prix Cecilia as the best CD of the year 2012 by the Belgian press. 

  

Teaching plays a central role in the artistic life of Justus Grimm. Following tutorship at the Brussels Chapelle Reine Elisabeth  (2002-2003) and at the Institut Superieur de Musique de Namur (2003-2008), he held the title as professor for violoncello at the Royal Conservatory of Antwerp in 2008, where he acts also as  the Artistical Director since 2013.

He plays a violoncello dated 1760 of P.A. Testore. 

During the season 2022/2023 Justus Grimm has joined International Festivals/Concerts as soloist and teacher in Belgium, Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain, Romania, Germany, Poland or Lithuania. TwoCD-releases are foreseen for French and German Labels with works of Francis Poulenc and the Concertino of Hans Gál with Riga Sinfonietta.