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Hiroyo Masumura

Education: Creating colours out of black and white keys

Passion: breeding little plants for little appartments plants | fabricating little japanese treats | photography

Always searching for: interesting music and new pieces | beautiful parks and shoes that fit


long & boring version:

Hiroyo Masumura loves the piano. So much that she is around festivals playing chamber music and giving solo recitals all over the place.
She played at Klavierwoche Gasteig in Munich, in the Arnold-Schönberg-Center Vienna and at The Edinburgh Festival, Scotland.
Hiroyo has a strong passion for teaching as well. As a piano teacher at the Vienna State Music School she writes new stuff for her students – music that they adore and that fires them up.

Hiroyo is a prize winner at piano composition competitions such as Wendl & Lung Vienna and PTNA (The Piano Teachers’ National Association of Japan).
She is the winner of Wiener Pianisten Wettbewerb, the Steinway Förderpreis Munich and the Japanese Competition for Classical Music ピティナ・ピアノコンペティション PTNA Piano Competition (PTNA: Piano Teachers’ National Association of Japan).

As pianist and répétiteur Hiroyo also conducted several music theater productions. Which gave her lots of experience in improvising.
In music – and in general… ;o)

She graduated with distinction and highest scores in piano (performing diploma) in Kanagawa (Japan), Munich and Vienna.
Hiroyo started her career at home in the living room giving improvisation concerts together with her sister.
Her first compositions were accompaniments for famous japanese popsongs that she played by ear.

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Gilbert Hirtz

Education: students are the greatest teachers!

Passions: being curious of everything | traveling to Greenland, Usbekistan, Oman, Lesotho | mountain climbing on Kilimanjaro, Großglockner, Alpamayo chico, Kang Yatze | assisting in the unfolding of my students full potential

Always searching for: new insights about teaching | bassoons that can be adapted to students hand and body sizes | inspirating through books | recreation in nature


long & boring version:

After operating with cool refrigerating machines and air conditioning grills, Gilbert Hirtz picked up his bassoon and studied music to be a warmhearted teacher. As a real all-rounder he likewise feels at home with the oboe, saxophone, clarinet and flute.

He is not a person of many words. So he let his students talk for him (who usually win the first prices in nationwide competitions) and the music he composes and arranges. Internationally he is best know for the only available method for the tenor clef “The Key to Tenor Clef”. Not many words in it, but lots of music…

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Astrid Seemann

Education: Doctor of veterinary medicine

Passions: animals – alive and painted

Always seacrhing for: new challenges and old wisdom


long & boring version:

Astrid Seemann was born with many funny ideas in her head and tries to bring them to paper with colourful pencils ever since. She loves painting and also dogs, cats, guinea pigs and cows. So she became a veterinary.

Astrid Seeman is a passionate bass player, but luckily she likes bassoonists too. They also make nice sounds and good mood as well.
In the picture you see her with Ylvi and Nelli, Models for “On a Sailboat”.

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Christoph Veit

Education: he studied music at his own risk

Passions: kicking and punching all kinds of wood | noodling fast pieces of music | bringing enthusiasm to friends and strangers | listening to thrillers whilst the circular saw is running | japanese woodworking tools

Always searching for: fresh carotts | the sharpest knife of all times | the T-shirt lying on top in the closet


long & boring version:

The bassoonist Christoph Veit is a successful reedmaker and provides great mouthpieces for all kinds of animals: fagottino-ists to pros in philharmonic orchestras. His company BestReeds was founded in 2008 and today he ships his nice little boxes with all handcrafted reeds in more than 30 countries.

Christoph Veit studied bassoon at the Hochschule für Musik Munich and The Mozarteum Salzburg and served as an orchestra player for many years. He played in the Bayerische Staatsoper München, the Rheinische Philharmonie Koblenz, in the Philharmonisches Orchester Augsburg and at Bühnenorchester der Wiener Staatsoper. He received grants from Villa Musica and the Michael Roever Stiftung (Germany).

Christoph Veit has had his own bassoon-class in the City of Vienna Music School. In his studio all the Anselma Music books were subjected to the hard real-life endurance test by his students. He is the COO of Anselma Music and the allround talent and trouble-shooting fairy.

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Karin Holzschuster

Education: tooting and strumming

Passions: studying google maps for hours and finally ending up somewhere else | left and right must be for amateurs | browsing and browsing and browsing – and bying nothing | eating gummy bears in the red sunset at the blue ocean

Always searching for: the perfect handbag | a break-resistant shopping ally | the ideal place for happiness | mango pudding


long & boring version:

Karin Holzschuster is a proven expert in teaching bassoon and guitar – not only does she take on one by one student, but also teaches a whole company of students at the same time. She conducts a guitar-orchestra with 35 guitarists and before concerts she does not hesitate to check if all 210 strings are perfectly in tune…

Karin Holzschuster studied bassoon and music pedagogy (majoring in guitar) in the Graz Music University. Already before graduating she was appointed in two renowned music schools. She experienced that teaching guitar was comfy due to a huge amount of lovely books and heaps of nice music. Teaching bassoon was oh-so-Weissenborn.

To make her lessons a wellspring of motivation and fun, Karin Holzschuster started composing tunes, etudes, and little concert pieces for her students. Her music includes sweet melodies, fancy rhythms and also a pedagogic thread, which supports students to become great bassoonists one day. Today Karin Holzschuster´s books are internationally renowned as first class teaching literature.

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Oliver Ottitsch

Education: from cardboard boxer to boxing cartoonist

Passions: being even more famous | everything that does not make too much work

Always searching for: more


long & boring version:

Oliver Ottitsch was born 1983 around noon. He never used to be an early bird. Pressed and plagued by his own long lasting insignificance to his own surprise he became a shooting star in the cartoon heaven. Today he is a successful guy known by everbody and his mother, even Wikipedia. His cartoons are shown in the Subway of Vienna to make waiting funny.

His original artwork is published by renown German magazines such as Stern, Titanic, Eulenspiegel, Nebelspalter and Bananenblatt. In 2013 he won the Cartoon prize Pas de deux / Paarlauf of the Goethe-Institut and a special prize by the German Ambassy in Paris. He is also a prize winner of the German’s Mathematicians Society. They like to laugh as well here and there.

In Anselma’s bassoon sheet music books he delights green horns and old rabbits and motivates bassoonists left, right and center with his humorous artworks.

 

www.OliverOttitsch.com

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Anselma Veit

Education: academic studies of music and field research in drinking coffee

Passions: fancy harmonies | reading books under trees | optimizing anything whatsoever| dancing Salsa | encouraging people | philosophizing with friends | going beyond personal limits

Always searching for: the ultimate improvisation | great people | something to optimise | clues and tricks for composing


long & boring version:

Born to an international family in Styria, Austria, Anselma Veit studied violin, bassoon (performing artist) and piano (piano teacher) at the Music Universities Graz and Vienna, The Mozarteum Salzburg. As a guest student she studied at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Paris and took Postgraduate Masterclasses in New York City. She made further studies in jazz-composition (piano and arrangement) with Monika Lang. Anselma graduated in all studies with distinction and highest scores.

Anselma Veit started playing the bassoon at the age of 20 and won her first orchestral position four years later. She has played with the Trier Philharmonic Orchestra, the Volksoper in Vienna, the Augsburg Philharmonic Orchestra, the Vienna Chamber Orchestra and in the Vienna State Opera Orchestra.

She qualified for getting grants from the Mozarteum Salzburg, from the European Union (Erasmus Stipendium) and twice from the Banff Centre for the Arts, Canada. Playing concerts brought her around the globe via plane, ferry, Shinkansen, Transsibirian Railway and fishing boat (for small islands). And to weird concert places such as a tennis court with wooden floor in New Delhi, India, a ship dock in La Spezia, Italy or between air conditioners on a shopping mall rooftop in Brasilia, Brasil.

Indoors she played in many beautiful locations like The Konzerthaus am Gendarmenmarkt, Berlin, Germany, Bolshoi Zal, St. Petersburg, Russia, in the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington DC, USA, in the Goldener Saal of Wiener Musikverein, at the Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre, Japan, the all wooden Sibelius Hall in Lahti, Finland, the stunning Franz Luszt Academy in Budapest and in the Shanghai Grand Theater, China.

After a performance in Princeton University she was allowed to see J.S. Bach’s portrait (in the private living room of a millionaire). Anselma played Schubert in an orange Indian Sari and Tschaikovskys 1812 Overture with real cannon shots on the Red Square in Moskow, Russia with Valery Gergiev, a quite american Rhapsodie espagnole with Dennis Russel Davies, a very lively “Isolde’s Love Death” with Sir Simon Rattle and a saturnalian Jupiter Symphony with Sir Colin Davis.

For many years she has been teaching the bassoon in the Music School of the City of Vienna. Anselma’s students are regularly prize winners in national kids and youth competitions. She successfully prepared young musicians to studying the bassoon as a pro at the University for Music. Being a teacher she noticed a need for some fresh air in the student literature. So she started composing and testing new methods. Xerox copies of her works were on high demand. To make these new books available for a bigger audience and not just locally she started a publishing company.

Anselma publishes music and essays about being human and other bothersome stuff since 2009. She has written commissioned pieces for private individuals and organisations such as the Australasian Double Reed Society, Anciuti Music Festival Italy and Jeunesses Musicales Suisse. She was featured by the International Double Reed Society (IDRS) under the title “The Return of User Friendly Bassoon Tunes” and in the famous Fou the basson French Magazine. Her bassoon expertise was showcased by the German Stretta Music Journal to guide young music lovers to their instrument of choice.

Anselmas Music has been nominated the Export Grant by the European Union and Anselma’s artistic work is sponsored by Moosmann Fagotte. Her sheet music and compositions for oboe and bassoon are  part of the nationwide French Music curriculum every year since 2015 and recommended by the Confédération Musicale de France (CMF).

Currently Anselma Veit is the head of Musikschule 1010 – Privatschule in Vienna. Privately she is a real happy camper. Being married for more than 20 years to the best man in the world. A bassoonist of course…