Frédéric dUrsel & Cindy Castillo
Biography Frédéric dUrsel & Cindy Castillo
Frédéric d'Ursel
received his first violin training from Édith Volckaert and then studied with Philippe Hirshhorn at the Conservatoire royal de Bruxelles. He took part in the Tanglewood Festival (USA) in 1985 and 1986, where he played under Leonard Bernstein, Eiji Oue and Leon Fleischer among others, and also took part in master classes with Joseph Silverstein and the Muir String Quartet. As an orchestral musician, he has played under Sir Colin Davis, Christopher Hogwood, Philippe Herreweghe, Reinbert de Leeuw, Gennadi Rozhdestvensky, Antonio Pappano and Emmanuel Krivine, amongst others.
Frédéric d'Ursel is a co-founder of the Oxalys ensemble and has been associated with it since 1993, performing all over the world in concert halls such as the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, the Konzerthaus in Berlin, the Conservatory of Moscow and the Library of Congress in Washington. He has taught violin at the Conservatoire royal de Bruxelles since 2000. He has also formed a duo with organist Cindy Castillo dedicated to Bach's sonatas; Jean-Pierre Deleuze composed his Traüme und Erwachen especially for them.
Cindy Castillo
High-spirited and uncompromising, talented and inspiring, Cindy Castillo has been raising her visibility on the international organ scene through distinctive programmes that explore the possible dialogues between the organ and other artistic expressions such as dance, video or electronic music. Along these lines she conceived “Offrande”(Offering), presenting Carl Dreyer’s silent movie “The Passion of Joan of Arc” accompanied on the organ by Johann Sebastian Bach’s “The Musical Offering”. Or also “À contre-courants” (Against the current), which develops an auditory and visual adventure with video director Lise Bruyneel, based on the chorale “An Wasserflüssen Babylon”.
Her activities as a recitalist have led her from Tokyo to New York and many European countries, without neglecting Africa (Lubumbashi cathedral). Thus she has already played or will do so in the near future in the Bozar series and at the Ars Musica Festival (both in Brussels), at the Philharmonic Hall in Liège, the Festival de Sablé and the Festival Toulouse les orgues (both in France), as well as the Metropolitan Arts Center and Suntory Hall (Tokyo).
Cindy Castillo is in touch with quite a few contemporary composers; several works have been dedicated to her by Claude Ledoux and Jean-Pierre Deleuze, whose compositions for organ and voice she has recorded with Aurélie Franck. The album entitled “Fragments”, which appeared on the Paraty label in July 2014, counts already as a must in the field of contemporary music with organ, earning the award “Octave de la musique contemporaine” in 2015. In September 2019 she released a new album on Cypres based on the piece « C#2 » composed for her by Pierre Slinckx.
Her degrees include First Prizes from the conservatoires of Brussels and Paris, a Master degree from Namur and a diploma of advanced studies in Strasbourg, having spent formative years with masters such as Benoît Mernier, Jean Ferrard, Christophe Mantoux, Michel Bouvard and Olivier Latry. Laureate of the Rotary Club, the Vocation Foundation, the Wernaers and Lacour Foundation, First Prize of the National Axion Classics 2000 Competition (aka Belfius Competition), she served as artist in residence at Sapporo Concert Hall in 2008-2009.
In addition to her activities as a performer, Cindy Castillo can also count on five years experience as producer and host at Musiq3, the Francophone classical radio station in Belgium. She teaches the organ with Hampus Lindwall at the IMEP Graduate School of Arts (Namur) in the framework of a new educational project baptized “OrgueStudio”. Concurrently she serves as titular organist at the National Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Brussels.
