In addition to soloists and music collectives performing at concerts, Rapla Church Music Festival will also bring outstanding pedagogues as teachers into summer academies. For ninth year in a row, summer academies are expecting participants to register for them from here and abroad. This year vocal teachers will work from 26th – 30th of July in Rapla Adult High School. For the first time Prof. Gundula Hintz from Germany and Samuel Krum from the UK will arrive to Rapla as foreign guests. Both are internationally renowned and their students are active musicians around the world. Pedagogues from Estonia, Pille Lill and Oliver Kuusik, are recognized opera singers and they have shared their knowledge and experience in Rapla Summer Academy for several years already. Learning period will finish traditionally with the Opera Gala, which will take place in Rapla church, where the singers and teachers, who are taking part of the summer academy, will perform.

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GUNDULA HINTZ 

was born in Berlin and studied singing at the Hochschule der Künste Berlin (Prof. Ingrid Figur, William Murray). She also attended masterclasses with Aribert Reimann and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. Numerous radio and TV recordings document her successful career. She has recorded  Mozart’s Trios for CD with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and the woodwind of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.
G. Hintz runs an international singing studio in Berlin and holds regularly masterclasses in Berlin, Bayreuth and the Deutsche Oper am Rhein, Düsseldorf. She has appeared as an opera and concert singer with great success in numerous German and international opera houses (Berlin, Leipzig, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Naples, Venice, St Gallen and London), as well as at the Festival Radio France in Montpellier, the Venice Biennale, and the Berliner Festwochen. She received great acclaim for her interpretation of Baroness Liddy in the first performance of Detlev Glanert’s "Scherz, Satire, Ironie und tiefere Bedeutung" at Opernhaus Halle, as well as for her portrayal of Countess Laura in the first performance of Roland Moser’s "Avatar" in St. Gallen. After her first engagements in the jugendlich-dramatisch Fach (eg. Amelia in “Un Ballo in Maschera”, Sieglinde in “Die Walküre”), she made her debut in 2011 as Fricka in Wagner’s “Ring” at Staatstheater Darmstadt. With this she completed her change of Fach to Dramatic Mezzosoprano. Also in Darmstadt she portrayed the role of Herodias in the new staging of Strauss’ “Salome”. Furthermore she performed in Mahlers’ 8 Symphony at the Berlin Philharmonie, appeared as Fricka in the Ring Tetralogy at the theatres of Halle and Ludwigshafen, at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, London in Mark-Anthony Turnage’s “Anna Nicole”, in Halle as Adelaide in the new production of Strauss’ “Arabella”, at Leipzig Opera as Fricka in Wagner’s „Rheingold“ and as Dämonia in Humperdinck’s „Dornroeschen“. Augsburg Theatre engaged her as Fraeulein Schneider in Kander’s musical „Cabaret“ for summer’s Open Air. In 2017 was G. Hintz’s Canada debut, singing Adelaide in Strauss’ „Arabella“ at the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto.

 

PILLE LILL

is one of the most well known opera singers in Estonia today. She has graduated from the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre (EAMT) with two professions – choir conducting and opera singing. She continued her studies in the post garaduate level of the London Guildhall School of Music and Drama (Prof. J. Peters) and defended her master’s degree at the Helsinki Sibelius Academy (Prof. L. Linko-Malmio). In 2004-2011 she furthered her skills in the context of doctoral studies at EAMT (Prof. Jaakko Ryhänen) and in 2005-2006 in the lied class of the University of Karlsruhe (Prof Mitsuko Shirai and Hartmuth Höll). In addition, she has taken part of several world-famous musicians’ master classes (Elisabeth Söderström, Irwin Gage, Emma Kirkby, Mauriz Sillem, Wilma Vernocchi etc.) P. Lill has performed as an opera, oratorio and chambermusic singer in many countries. She has sung the lead role in close to 30 operas and she has cooperated with several reputed conductors (Rozhdestvensky, Cillario, N. Järvi, Klas, Prieto, Alekseyev ect). She has done many recordings for the Estonian National Broadcasting and her voice is perpetuated on a number of CD-s. P. Lill has been rewarded with the Big Dipper award for Best Female Singer (1996), she has been a laureate for Georg Ots Prize (2002), a grantee of the Wagner Society Scholarship (1998) and a 3rd class honoree of the Order of Bishop Platon (2005). She has also been awarded with the UNICEF Bluebird Award (2009), the Estonian Cultural Endowment Award (2014), 4th class Order of the White Star (2016) and Esther of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Estonia. P. Lill was a vocal teacher in EAMT from 1997 to 2013 (assistant professor from 2003) and she has given master classes in many countries (Germany, Russia, Finland, Belarus, Latvia, Israel etc.). She has been also invited to be the member of the Jury in Latvia, Estonia, Russia and Israel. P. Lill was a board member of Estonian Composers’ Union from 2003-2009, she is a board member of the Estonian Chamber of Culture and the Finnish-Estonian Culture Fund. She is also the founder and creative director of the PLMF Music Trust from 2003.

 

OLIVER KUUSIK
is one of his generation’s most outstanding opera soloists in Estonia, who started his studies in singing at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre with Associate Prof. Pille Lill and Prof. Virgilius Noreika and has graduated from master’s level and opera studio of the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London (Prof. Rudolf Piernay). He was working as a soloist of the Estonian National Opera between 2008-2017 and is working as a freelancer at the moment. From the most important roles his repertoire includes Faust (Gounod’s Faust), Nemorino (Donizetti’s The Elixir of Love, Liverpool, UK), Don Ramiro (Rossini’s La Cenerentola), Sesto (Händel’s Julius Caesar), Fenton (Verdi’s Falstaff) etc. He has recorded Fleishman’s Rothschild’s Violin together with the Liverpool Royal Symphony Orchestra and sung Enjolras in Schönberg’s/Boublil’s musical Les Miserables. As a valued oratorio and chamber music singer O. Kuusik has performed in over 25 different grand musical works and given concerts in Estonia as well as several foreign countries. In 2010 O. Kuusik was rewarded with the annual “Crystal Shoe” Award of the Estonian Theatre Union, in 2009 O. Kuusik was chosen as a laureate of Jeunes Ambassadeurs Lyriques (Montreal, Canada). In 2008 he received the annual Estonian Theatre Award for his singing in Britten’s opera Turn of the Screw and he has been awarded with SEB Bank’s audience award “Soloist of the Year 2001”. O. Kuusik has won the 3rd Prize at the 5th Klaudia Taev International Competition for Young Opera Singers (2007) and the Kremling’s Special Prize for the best interpretation of German Song. He has also won the 1st Prize at the Hendrik Krumm Competition in 2006, the 1st Prize at the Estonian singing competition Young Singer (2002) and the PLMF award “Young Musician 2005”. Several praising reviews have been published about him in worlds most notable publications such as Opera Now, Opera Magazine, The Stage, The London Times etc.

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PIIA PAEMURRU 

her concerts have brought her together with several outstanding musicians like Eilene Hannan, Rhoda Achieng, Virgilijus Noreika, Jaakko Ryhänen, Margarita Voites, Mati Palm, Pille Lill, Nadia Kurem, Hanna-Liina Võsa, Oliver Kuusik, Aare Saal, Kädy Plaas, Marion Melnik, Priit Volmer, Angelika Mikk, René Soom, Teele Jõks, Helen Lokuta, Pirjo Püvi, Angelika Klas-Fagerlund, Mari Tampere-Bezrodny, Peeter Paemurru, Anna-Liisa Bezrodny, Andreas Lend, Vahur Vurm etc. She graduated from the Tallinn Conservatory (prof. Laine Mets, MA 1999) and in 1986 she began working at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre’s Vocal Department as a piano accompanist. P. Paemurru has often played as a piano soloist and as a part of different ensembles in the Baltics, Scandinavia, Germany and Russia. She has been rewarded with the Special Prize for the best piano accompanist in several singing competitions, including five times at the International K. Taev Singing Contest in Pärnu. In cooperation with the Swedish singer Ingegerd Björklund she has recorded two CD-s and a CD with Marje Sink’s Christmas songs has been released with soloists Pille Lill, Aare Saal and Oliver Kuusik (PLMF, 2006).