Angelika Bachmann Angelika Bachmann, born in 1972 in Hamburg, was exempted from the regular school curriculum and was thus able to devote her time entirely to playing the violin. This enabled her to make her solo debut with the
Hamburger Symphoniker at the age of seven. She studied with Roland Greutter,
concertmaster of the
Hamburg Radio Symphony Orchestra, among others, which helped her win first prize multiple times in Germany's prestigious
Jugend musiziert competition. In 2007 she published
Flexible Strings: Five Pieces for Variable String Ensemble, a collection of her arrangements, with
Breitkopf & Härtel. In addition to music, Bachmann also studied
German and
Philosophy. In October 2011 she received the
Federal Cross of Merit for her involvement in musical work with children and adolescents.
Iris Siegfried Iris Siegfried, also born 1972 in Hamburg, was also a prize winner of the Jugend musiziert competition. Soon she discovered her vocal talents in performances with various
choirs and
a cappella groups. Alongside her musical studies, she graduated in 2000 with a degree in
law. Since then she has worked as a lawyer for a Hamburg law practice specialising in
competition and
copyright law. As of 2008, she is a lecturer at the at that university, and from 2018 became a professor at that university. In October 2011, she received the
Federal Cross of Merit. She left Salut Salon in November 2022 after 22 years.
Sonja Lena Schmid Sonja Lena Schmid was born in
Tübingen in 1981. She studied cello and chamber music in Hamburg, Amsterdam, the Hague and
Lübeck, and has won many awards and grants, including a grant from
Die Zeit, the Dutch
Huygens grant, the first prize in the Charles Hennen Concours International Chamber Music Competition and a special prize in the international competition "Schubert and the Music of Modern Times". An avid theatre fan, Schmid has performed in productions at the
Thalia Theater in Hamburg, the
Deutsches Schauspielhaus, and the
Munich Biennale.
Anne-Monika von Twardowski Anne-Monika von Twardowski, born in 1982 in
Durban, South Africa, moved to Germany when she was only six years old, where she had her first piano lessons. From 2002 to 2011, she studied piano teaching and performance, and musical arts at the
Musikhochschule Lübeck, where Barbara Martini, Jacob Leuschner and David Meier were her teachers. She studied abroad in 2005 and 2006 in
Barcelona at the
Escola Superior de Música Catalunya where Alan Branch, among others, were her teachers. von Twardowski is passionate about community service, and as of June 2012 she has been involved as a sponsor of the project "Schule mit Courage – Schule ohne Rassismus" (School with courage – School without racism) at the Theodor-Heuss-Schule in
Pinneberg near Hamburg. ==Members==