Born and raised in Hamburg, the actress Johanna Christine Gehlen studied at the Academy for Music and Theatre in Hannover, where she was awarded her degree with distinction. Her first engagements at the Municipal Theatre of Munster and the Playhouse Essen followed shortly after. She has performed in classic works such as Georg Büchner’s ›Danton’s Death‹, ›As you Like It‹ by William Shakespeare, ›Nathan the Wise‹ by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Goethe’s ›Faust II‹ and ›St Joan of The Stockyards‹ by Berthold Brecht. In St Pauli Theatre, she has performed alongside the likes of Ben Becker, Herbert Knaup, Volker Lechtenbrink, Boris Aljimovic, Emanuela Frankenberg and Leslie Malton in works such as A Streetcar Named Desire, The Truth, Do Not Disturb (Une Heure de Tranquilité), Bella Figura and The Father (Der Vater), directed by Ulrich Waller and Wilfried Minks.

The television comedy-series ›Sketch-Up’ made Gehlen a household name in the mid-90s, since which time she has starred in countless television films and series, including Polizei 110, Tatort, The Harvesters (Die Erntehelfern), Wherever the Road May Lead (Wohin der Weg mich führt), Mama and the Millionaire, A case For Two (Ein Fall für Zwei), Podgy Me (Moppel Ich), The Trustee – A Portrait of Birgit Breuel, Lies Have Beautiful Legs (Lügen haben schöne Beine) and Sesame Street.

Violinist Konstanze Lerbs studied in Hanover and Cologne. She did post-graduate studies with Rainer Kußmaul at the University of Music in Freiburg and also studied Baroque violin in Trossingen. This was followed by numerous performances as a soloist and in chamber ensembles, before she joined The Deutsche Kammer­philharmonie Bremen in 1995.

Apart from the orchestra, she continues to pursue her interest in chamber music, in which she has a wide stylistic range and also loves making excursions into the cross-over genre.

Outside music, she dedicates her attention and her interest to her children and her home in Bremen.

Anja Manthey was raised in Wilhelmshaven, not far from the orchestra’s current home city of Bremen. She left the North Sea town to study at the University of Music in Hamburg and Freiburg. She joined the then Chamber Orchestra of the Young German Philharmonic back in 1982.

Apart from a busy orchestra schedule and regular chamber music appearances in various ensembles, she is particularly interested in the humanities. In 2012, she graduated with distinction in Musicology, German and English. For many years, Anja Manthey has contributed her enthusiasm and wealth of experience in these subjects to organizing and holding the concert introduction events ›en passant‹ and ›Auftakt‹ (engl. ›Prélude‹) for the Bremen subscription concerts.

Her favourite leisure pastimes – beyond music and musicology – include reading. In 2020, she was awarded her doctorate (DPhil).

Belgian cellist Marc Froncoux studied at the Music Colleges in both Brussels and Detmold, with Edmond Baert and Professor Andre Navarra respectively. He is the prize winner of several competitions such as the international Premio Vittorio Gui competition in Florence. On completing his studies, Marc Froncoux was appointed teacher of Professor Edmond Baert’s solo class in Brussels and also played solo cello at the Opera in Lucca, Italy.

Marc Froncoux has been solo cellist with The Deutsche Kammer­philharmonie Bremen since 1998. In his adopted North German home, he conducts the Oldenburg Chamber Orchestra and is regularly involved in chamber music courses for amateurs.

Along with The Deutsche Kammer­philharmonie Bremen he has guested in many concert venues in numerous international capitals. He is one of the section leaders in the orchestra and regularly performs in the orchestra’s series of chamber music concerts.

In his free time, Marc Froncoux enjoys spending time in the country. He trains regularly for his trekking tours in the Himalayas, thus combining healthy exercise with his search for inner calm.

Since 1993, Daniel Sepec has been concertmaster with The Deutsche Kammer­philharmonie Bremen, with which he also appears regularly as a soloist. He has recorded two CDs with the orchestra featuring works by Johann Sebastian Bach as well as Antonio Vivaldi’s ›Four Seasons‹, on which he also directed himself.

He has also appeared several times as guest concertmaster with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe (including a tour with Claudio Abbado), Camerata Academica Salzburg and the Ensemble Oriol Berlin. As a soloist he has performed with the Academy of Ancient Music under Christopher Hogwood, the Vienna Academy of Music under Martin Haselböck and the Orchestre des Champs-Elysées under Philippe Herreweghe.

His CD recording of H. I. F. Biber’s Rosary Sonatas received the German Record Critics’ Award. Daniel Sepec is the only musician to date to have recorded a CD on a rediscovered violin formerly belonging to Ludwig van Beethoven together with pianist Andreas Staier. As a member of the Arcanto Quartet, he has made recordings of the Mozart, Brahms, Debussy, Ravel, Bartók and Dutilleux string quartets, as well as Schubert’s String Quartet.

From September 2010 until July 2014, he was professor at the School of Music in Basle. In 2014, he was offered a professorship at Lübeck University of Music.

During her school days Friederike Latzko was a junior student at the University of Music in Cologne, where she received intensive chamber music lessons from the Amadeus Quartet. After earning her university entrance qualification, she changed to the University of the Arts in Berlin, where she gained further ensemble experience in all of the major West Berlin orchestras. She was a DAAD and Herbert von Karajan Foundation scholarship holder, associate teacher and lecturer with the German National Youth Orchestra and the Young German Philharmonic, as well as chamber music partner to renowned soloists.

In 1980, Friederike founded The Deutsche Kammer­philharmonie Bremen together with like-minded fellow students – at first under the name ›Chamber Orchestra of the Young German Philharmonic‹, then later from 1987 in Frankfurt ›Deutsche Kammer­philharmonie‹. In the meantime, she has been a solo violist and dedicated music teacher here for over 30 years.

With Mark Scheibe, she created the ›Melody for Life‹ and with Rodrigo Blumenstock, Stefan Latzko and Gunther Schwiddessen the orchestra project ›Sinfonia Concertante‹, in which members of The Deutsche Kammer­philharmonie Bremen play alongside dedicated amateurs.

Friederike Latzko has two grown-up children and spends any spare time in her studio painting and working on her next exhibition.

Both as a soloist and as a chamber musician, Tanja Tetzlaff is one of the leading cellists of her generation. Her repertoire is broad and varied, bridging the standard repertoire with contemporary compositions from the 21st century. She studied cello with Bernhard Gmelin at Hamburg College of Music and Drama, followed by studies with Heinrich Schiff at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. She has won many international competitions, including the ARD Competition and has also worked with numerous renowned orchestras – the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, the Orchestre de Paris and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and conductors such as Lorin Maazel, Daniel Harding and Vladimir Ashkenazy. She has also recorded the cello concertos Wolfgang Rihm and Ernst Toch with the Deutsche Kammer­philharmonie Bremen on the Neos label.

Last season saw Tanja Tetzlaff in Tokyo with the NHK Symphony Orchestra and also on stage with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra. For the 2018 season she is Artist in Residence with the SWR Schwetzinger Festival where she can be heard in a number of performances throughout the season. She has a particular interest in chamber music und performs regularly with Christian Tetzlaff and Lars Vogt and can be seen on stage at the renowned Heidelberg Spring Festival, at festivals in Bergen, Baden-Baden and at the Edinburgh Festival. This much sought-after performer is a core member of the Heimbach Festival ›Spannungen‹ as well as being a member of the Tetzlaff Quartet, which she co-founded in 1994 with Christian Tetzlaff, Elisabeth Kufferath and Hanna Weinmeister. She was, for many years, principal cellist with the Deutsche Kammer­philharmonie Bremen; a post she held until 2018.