Entertainment

Founded in 1999, DDC is one of the most renowned breakdance crews in the German-speaking world. Combining breakdance with modern artistry, they have won numerous awards. The crew has toured worldwide, performed at major festivals, and produced over 300 shows, including "Breakin' Mozart." DDC is known for gala shows, TV appearances, and large live events. In 2013, they founded their own company and also provide talent development at the DDC Factory. Since 2023, their tour program "Breakin' Circus" has been on the road.

Be Charlotte is a Singer-Songwriter from Scotland who has a fierce sense of identity, a quiet assertiveness , and a rare talent which makes heads turn and draws you in to her songs. She is blessed with an instantly recognisable vocal and an ear for impeccable melodies.
Since starting to find her voice as a teenager with an acoustic guitar in Dundee, she has taken on the pop world touring Europe, North America and Asia as well as sharing the stage with Lewis Capaldi, Tom Walker, Laura Mvula, Major Lazer and Frightened Rabbit.

Tipped by BBC Radio 1 as one to watch - she also won the prestigious ‘Best Newcomer’ prize at The Scottish Music Awards, and won The Young Scot Award for an outstanding contribution to music. Charlotte has enjoyed chart success in Scotland, Sweden, and Germany ahead of her debut album ‘Self Help and Fictional Doubts’ and recently on the US Billboard chart as co-writer and feature vocalist on rap sensation Rod Wave’s ‘Lost in Love’.

Photocredit: Louie John Lowis

Samuel Selle (*1986 in Heidelberg) studied in Hamburg, Lübeck, and Cologne with Bernhard Gmelin, Sebastian Klinger, and the Alban Berg Quartet. His artistic development has also been shaped by a wide range of encounters with renowned musicians and ensembles, including Arto Noras, Wolfgang Boettcher, Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt, the Beaux Arts Trio, the Artemis Quartet, and the Guarneri Quartet. He is the cellist of the internationally acclaimed Trio Adorno, founded in 2003, which is considered one of the most exciting and promising ensembles of its generation. The trio has received numerous awards and scholarships, including at the Melbourne Chamber Music Competition, the Osaka Chamber Music Competition, the German Music Competition, the International Johannes Brahms Competition, and was a semifinalist at the ARD International Music Competition. In 2022, Trio Adorno also took over the artistic direction of the chamber music series “Freunde der Kammermusik Quickborn e.V.,” which has been organizing concerts for over 60 years. Samuel Selle regularly performs at international festivals such as the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival, Ludwigsburg Palace Festival, Oberstdorf Music Summer, Trondheim Chamber Music Festival, Enescu Festival, as well as at concerts throughout Europe, Asia, Central America, and Australia. In 2019, he toured Latin America—performing and giving masterclasses in Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica—in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut. Later that year, he also toured Saudi Arabia. In addition to his concert career, he teaches at the Youth Chamber Music Initiative Hamburg and the Hamburg Conservatory.

Andra Heesch has established herself as an internationally renowned soloist and chamber musician. Her presence in world-famous concert halls such as Suntory Hall in Tokyo, Carnegie Hall in New York, and the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg attests to her artistic radiance. She is a regular guest at festivals including the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, the Enescu Festival, and the D'Accord Klassikfestival. Her interpretations are marked by a synthesis of exquisite tonal aesthetics and musical eloquence that captivates both audiences and critics alike. A reviewer from critic-arad wrote: “Andra has the ability to charge a musical phrase with intense and sincere pathos, expressive power, and tension in a perfect flow, with bow and breath transitions merging almost imperceptibly.” Other reviews praise her “elegance, feminine energy, and nuanced versatility.” Chamber music lies at the heart of her artistic work. As a member of the Vitti Ensemble—a duo with Marketa Janoušková founded in 2022—she has recorded for Czech Radio and toured internationally. Since 2023, Heesch has been a permanent member of the Leipzig String Trio, which celebrated great success at the Martha Argerich Festival. She is also a founding member of the Nichiteanu Trio, reformed in 2022 with Ionel Adrian Iliescu and Samuel Selle. The ensemble is named in honor of Andra's father, who passed away in 2014. In 2024, Andra Heesch also joined the berlin.piano.quintet as its violist. She shares her knowledge through international masterclasses and serves as artistic director of the Kulturladen St. Georg in Hamburg. Andra completed her studies summa cum laude at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg, further enriched by masterclasses with Tabea Zimmermann, Nobuko Imai, and Thomas Riebl. During her youth, she won several competitions. She performs on a viola made by Girolamo Brensio (1536), a family heirloom passed down from her father.

Ionel Adrian Iliescu (b. 1981 in Bucharest) completed his diploma at the Lübeck University of Music in 2006 under Professor Christiane Edinger and earned his concert exam degree in 2010 from the Hamburg University of Music with Professor Kolja Blacher. His chamber music education was shaped, among others, by Professor Walter Levin of the LaSalle Quartet. Iliescu is a prizewinner of numerous national and international competitions, including Jeunesse Musicale in Bucharest, the Kloster Schöntal competition (special prize), Città di Stresa, the Takasaki Competition in Japan, and the Furtwängler Prize in Lübeck (2006). He has taken part in masterclasses with Michele Auclair, Zakhar Bron, Ruggiero Ricci, and Donald Weilerstein. Concert engagements have taken him throughout Europe, South America, and Asia. As a soloist, he has performed with the Romanian Radio Orchestra, the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra, and the National Orchestra of Peru. He served as concertmaster of the Lübeck Philharmonic (2005–2009), the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra (2009–2014), and as associate concertmaster of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (2015–2017). Since 2017, he has been the first concertmaster of the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra and regularly appears as guest concertmaster with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Munich Philharmonic, and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. Since 2018, Iliescu has been a member of the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra and joined the Lucerne Festival Orchestra in 2019.

Lion Hinnrichs (*1988 in Hamburg) studied in Lübeck, Cologne and Berlin (University of the Arts) with Prof. Konrad Elser, the Alban Berg Quartet and Prof. Pascal Devoyon. His work with Menachem Pressler and the Artemis Quartet provided further important artistic impulses. Lion Hinnrichs has won several prizes at major competitions such as the Melbourne Chamber Music Competition, Brahms Competition, Osaka Chamber Music Competition, German Music Competition and is a semi-finalist at the ARD Music Competition. His busy concert schedule as a soloist and chamber musician has taken him throughout Europe and America, as far afield as Asia and Australia, as well as to the stages of various international festivals. This has included appearances at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, the Melbourne Recital Center, the Prinzregententheater Munich, the Osaka Izumi Hall and the Liederhalle Stuttgart. Various radio recordings (e.g. BR, SWR, Deutschlandfunk, MDR-Kultur, NDR-Kultur, ABC Australia) document his versatile artistic work. His CD recording In the shadow with works by Mozart, Martinu and Mendelssohn was nominated for an Echo-Klassik Award. Lion Hinnrichs is pianist of the award-winning and internationally renowned piano trio Trio Adorno, the berlin.piano.quintet and pianist of the Ensemble Quillo for contemporary music, as well as artistic director of the concert series Freunde der Kammermusik Quickborn e.V. (Friends of Chamber Music Quickborn).

Specialising in German Expressionist and Classical Modernist works on paper, Thole Rotermund Kunsthandel has been one of the leading contacts for collectors throughout Europe in this field for over 20 years. The focus is on important artists of the early 20th century: August Macke, Franz Marc, Paul Klee, Alexej von Jawlensky, Lyonel Feininger, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Emil Nolde and others. But the abstract tendencies of early post-war art, such as Ernst Wilhelm Nay and Eduard Bargheer, are also represented. The enthusiasm and passion is for the medium of paper. This is linked to the joy of the freedom, intimacy and immediacy of hand drawing in all its forms and its spontaneous and emotional – but often also fully mature – artistic character, which never ceases to fascinate.

Discover all cruises on which the gallery is represented on board.

Growing up in the west of Hamburg, a chance encounter in the early 1990s led to a close friendship with the Hamburg artist Horst Janssen, who vividly intensified her interest in modern art. After training as a publishing saleswoman at Axel Springer Verlag AG and managing the location office of Filmförderung Hamburg, Kerstin Peters worked as a freelancer in PR and cultural management for over ten years, including for the municipality of Rellingen, where she organised exhibitions, readings and concerts. A later bachelor's degree in literature and Japanese studies at the age of 44 rounded off her professional training. Her passion for the medium of paper also stems from her proximity to Japan. She runs the Horst Janssen Library in Hamburg's Blankenese district on a voluntary basis. Kerstin Peters has been working for Thole Rotermund Kunsthandel since February 2018.