Christmas carols at Tempelhof Airport

Born in Frankfurt am Main in 1984, Simone Gruppe received her first trumpet lessons at the age of 9 at the Frankfurt Youth Music School with Sunhild Pfeiffer. After graduating from high school, she first studied with Prof. Klaus Schuhwerk, Heiko Hermann and Balázs Nemes at the Frankfurt University of Music and with Prof. Sepp Eidenberger at the Bruckner University in Linz/Austria. She then moved to the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe to study with Prof. Reinhold Friedrich, where she completed her master’s degree with distinction.

She gained orchestral experience in the European Youth Orchestra (EUYO) and the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra, among others. After internships with the orchestra of the National Theater Mannheim and the Stuttgart Philharmonic, she has been a member of the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin since 2010.

Dániel Ember was born in Debrecen (Hungary) in 1982 and studied at the Zoltán Kodály Music School there with Miklós Kökényessy. He went on to study at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest with Ferenc Tarjáni. During this training, he was a member of the Ernő-Dohnányi Symphony Orchestra Budapest and the Hungarian Telecom Symphony Orchestra Budapest.

In 2005, Dániel Ember was accepted into the Orchestra Academy of the Berliner Philharmoniker, where he was taught by Stefan de Leval Jezierski until 2007. From 2010 to 2011 he was in Marie-Luise Neunecker’s class at the Hanns Eisler School of Music in Berlin. Between 2014 and 2018, he studied at the Berlin University of the Arts with Christian-Friedrich Dallmann. From 2007 to 2013 he was principal horn at the Hamburg State Opera.

Dániel Ember has won numerous prizes, including in 2001 in Brno (Czech Republic), 2002 in London and 2004 in Telfs (Austria). He was awarded 2nd prize at the ARD International Music Competition in Munich in 2010 and 3rd prize at the International Instrumental Competition in Markneukirchen in 2012.

He has been principal horn in the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin since 2013 and has also been a member of the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra since 2017.

Fabian Neckermann, born in 1995 in Ochsenfurt, Lower Franconia, has been principal tuba in the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin since 2018 and has also been a lecturer at the Anton Rubinstein International Music Academy since 2021.
After starting out in the local music association, he completed a two-year training programme to become a state-certified ensemble leader at the vocational school for music in Bad Königshofen with instrumental teacher Udo Schneider. In 2013, he studied with Prof. Jens Bjørn-Larsen at the Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media, where he completed his bachelor’s degree with top marks.

He gained his first orchestral experience as a member of the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie and the European Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra, as well as an academy member of the Nuremberg State Philharmonic and the Bavarian State Orchestra in Munich.
Guest appearances as an orchestral musician have also taken him to the opera houses in Würzburg, Saarbrücken, Bonn, Hamburg and Berlin, as well as to the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Berlin Philharmonic.

Fabian Neckermann was a finalist in the 2016 German Music Competition, whereupon he received a special prize from the Capriccio Kulturforum – Gesellschaft zur Förderung von klassischer Musik und Kultur e.V. and was accepted as a scholarship holder in the 61st Federal Selection of Concerts by Young Artists. In the final, he performed as a soloist with the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn.

With his ensemble “Trio 21meter60”, consisting of three tubas, he was awarded the OPUS KLASSIK in 2022.
He is also a regular guest in ensembles such as “Genesis Brass”, the “Brass Ensemble Ludwig Güttler” and the “Brass Ensemble of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra”.