Nodoka Okisawa graduated from the conducting division of the Tokyo University of the Arts music department at the top of her class. Upon graduation, she received the Acanthus music and vocal awards, and is currently enrolled in the University’s graduate school. Ms. Okisawa has studied conducting under Yoshikazu Tanaka, Yoko Matsuo, Tadaaki Otaka and Ken Takaseki, and has taken master classes from Michiyoshi Inoue, Tatsuya Shimono and Peter Gülke.

In each class, she was selected as an outstanding student and conducted orchestras. She attended the 19th Affinis Music Festival as a conducting researcher, and was a conducting researcher with the Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa from 2011 to 2012.

Helmuth Reichel Silva was born in 1983 in Santiago, Chile. He started to play violin at the age of five, attending the Conservatorio Nacional de Música in Santiago, moving later to Germany in 2002. During this period he received several prizes and scholarships, such as the “Fondo Nacional de la Cultura y las Artes”. After finishing his violin studies in Würzburg with Soloist-Diploma, he joined the Stuttgarter Philharmoniker and later the Neue Philharmonie Westfalen at the Musiktheater im Revier Gelsenkirchen. During this time he was able to collect invaluable experience as an orchestra musician both in symphony and opera, working with conductors such as Mariss Jansons, Jonathan Nott, Hannu Lintu and Michael Sanderling, before going into conducting with Per Borin at the Musikhochschule Stuttgart and Sebastian Tewinkel at the Musikhochschule Trossingen, where he finished his musical training. He attended courses by Jorma Panula, Yuji Yuasa, Rodolfo Fischer, Bruno Weil and Yuuko Amanuma. Helmuth Reichel Silva was laureate of the Dirigentenpodium Baden-Württemberg Conducting Program, which gives young conductors the opportunity to work with leading orchestras in Germany.

Helmuth Reichel Silva has conducted orchestras such as the SWR Stuttgart Radio Symphony, Sinfonieorchester Basel, Orchestre Victor Hugo Franche-Comté, Stuttgarter Philharmoniker, Stuttgarter Kammerorchester, Orchestra di Padova e del Veneto, Oltenia Filarmonica, Georg Enescu Philharmonic, Kammerphilharmonie Graubünden, Württembergische Philharmonie Reutlingen and Südwestdeutsches Kammerorchester. He has also collaborated with the Landesjugendorchester Nordrhein-Westfalen and the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie. From 2014 until 2016 he was Chief Conductor of the Sinfonieorchester der Katholische Hochschulgemeinde Freiburg.