LAB51
guest resident duo
LAB51 is an interdisciplinary duo founded in 2016 by Johanna Vargas and Magdalena Cerezo, aiming to expand the contemporary repertoire for coloratura soprano and piano and to develop anew concept of Liedduo. Both artists work together to intertwine vocal, multimedia, and performance art with classical singing and piano playing in their projects and performances. The collaboration between Johanna and Magdalena began during their contemporary music
studies at the University of Music and Performing Arts Stuttgart under Prof. Angelika Luz and Prof. Nicolas Hodges, respectively. Since then, LAB51 has worked with composers such as Bernhard Lang, Johannes Kreidler, Wolfgang Rihm, Hans-Joachim Hespos, Gerhard Stäbler, Gregor Mayrhofer, Benjamin Scheuer, Hans Thomalla, Manuel Hidalgo Navas, and Óscar Escudero/Belenish Moreno- Gil. They have also received musical guidance from world-class artists such as Sarah Maria Sun, Donatienne Michel-Dansac, Georg Nigl, Julia Mihály, Anika Rutkofsky (Stuttgart Opera House), Christian Dierstein, and Hartmut Höll.
Highlights of the 2026/2027 season include performances at the Pharos Arts Foundation in Cyprus, where LAB51 will present signature works from the duo’s repertoire by Georges Aperghis, György Ligeti, and Bernhard Lang, and at the SONify! Festival in Graz, featuring the world premiere of a new work by composer Beltrán González.
Recent engagements in the 2025/2026 season include performances at the Musiques Démesurées Festival in Clermont-Ferrand, curated by composer Mikel Urquiza, featuring the world premiere of a new work by Hanan Hadžajlić alongside works by leading female composers including Sara Glojnarić, Carola Bauckholt, Jennifer Walshe, and Meredith Monk; at the SUENA Festival in Vienna and Sonic Lab in Linz, with world premieres by Natalia Laguens and Jorge Gómez Elizondo alongside Helmut Lachenmann’s iconic Got Lost; at the Ensems Festival at the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía, where LAB51 presented works by Bernhard Lang and Helmut Lachenmann; and at the ZeitGenuss Festival 2025 in Karlsruhe, with a performance of the multimedia composition The Day Fanny Mendelssohn Died by Óscar Escudero & Belenish Moreno-Gil. During the 2023/24 season, the duo performed internationally at festivals such as ZeitGenuss (Karlsruhe), Musica in Prossimità (Pinerolo, Italy), Meta World Contemporary Art Festival (Belgrade), Vocations – Reimagining the Lied (Berlin), and ECLAT (world premiere of The Day Fanny Mendelssohn Died by Belenish Moreno-Gil & Óscar Escudero). They also appeared at RESIS (Círculo de Bellas Artes de Madrid), Literaturhaus Stuttgart (invited by the Staatsoper Stuttgart), NDR (Kleiner Sendesaal, Hannover), the Royal Academy of Spain in Rome, Schauspiel Frankfurt,
and Festival de Royaumont. In 2022, LAB51 obtained an artistic residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris and performed at various events organized by Radio France and the Royaumont Foundation. During the 2020-21 season, LAB51 was a featured ensemble of the Munich Society of New Music, performing at the portrait concert of composer and conductor Gregor Mayrhofer. They also premiered and recorded Benjamin Scheuer's Sprechblasen for soprano, guitar, percussion, and piano with objects and samplers at the Akademie der Wissenschaften in Mainz alongside Vanessa Porter and Thilo Ruck. Highlights from the 2018-19 season included engagements at NUNC!3 (Northwestern University Chicago), the New Music Series of Goethe-Institut Schwäbisch Hall, and ZeitGenuss Festival Karlsruhe, curated by Johannes Kreidler. During the same period, the duo participated in the Darmstädter Ferienkurse für Neue Musik and won first prize at the John Cage Competition in Halberstadt, Germany.
LAB51's performances have been broadcast internationally on platforms such as Deutschlandfunk, NDR, Radio France, RTVE, and Radio Nacional Clásica Argentina, among others. In 2021, a CD recording of Wolfgang Rihm's Ophelia Lieder was released by Naxos-Capriccio. Since 2018, LAB51 has been coaching a program in contemporary voice training and performance while curating the concert and project series Out of the Box at the University of Music Karlsruhe. Among the highlights of this year’s projects is the recording of Duo LAB51 debut CD marking an important milestone in the duo’s artistic journey.
www.duolab51.com
Julián ELVIRA
guest resident soloist
Doctor in musicology, composer, soloist of the Municipal Symphonic Band of Madrid and researcher of sound and music for flutes from traditional cultures, Julián Elvira he has become a reference name in the interpretation of music
contemporary and avant-garde music for flute. His triple facet as a composer-performer-improviser, to which his unique stage sense must be added, contributes to the creation of a personality without equal. His fascination with sound material, which obtained from his flutes and tubes, is put at the service of the composer in a way enriching and always with a scrupulous respect for the scores.
With a classical musical education, Julián Elvira, interested in art and expressions of avant-garde, he completed a Postgraduate-Master's at the Corvinus University Foundation in Budapest related to the acoustics of the flute and focused on new trends and performances. This interest has led him to collaborate with numerous composers and creators, premiere and record multiple works and perform at important forums and festivals at the national and international.
He is a Senior Professor at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Madrid, studies he completed between 1982 and 1990. He has been professor at the Municipal School of Music of Majadahonda, Madrid, from 1993 to 1997 and soloist of the Guerrero Project between 1994 and 2006. Currently, he is soloist flute at the Municipal Symphonic Band of Madrid.
Since 2009, Julián Elvira has been playing his Prónomo flute, based on the complex system by Istvan Matuz, a unique instrument of his own production, being this the last step in the evolution of the transverse flute since Boëhm.
Beyond his role as a flutist, the peculiarity of his work and his stage presence has attracted the attention of various personalities demanding their presence and resources in various productions: En attendant, by Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, la raya en el agua by José Luis Turina, Fragmento de Orfeo by Jesús Rueda, Sodom by Eduardo Costa, Low de Julián Ávila, among others. His extensive contemporary repertoire in the field of interpretation leads us to names like Guerrero, Ávila, Garrido, Navarro, Polonio, Posadas, Rueda, Costa, Sotelo, Villanueva, Arias, Sánchez-Verdú, Durán-Loriga, Halffter, Varese, Donatoni, Berio, Sciarrino, Bussotti, or Ferneyhough, being the first flutist to fully interpret the cycle "Carceri D’Invenzione", in Spain and abroad.
In his role as a composer-performer prior to his Prónomo project, he produced Expiral (1998), Ira (2002), Tubos inteligentes (2004), 2018 (2005), and Ícarus (2019). All these works are multidisciplinary projects that arise from research and development of new techniques and structures. In this vein, but with a focus and attention to the youngest small children, he creates Tubocatessen (2004).
After the construction of the Prónomo flute, the most important projects revolve around its presentation and field study at the international level, visiting and working in Japan, India, Syria, with 3.1 Cultures studying and working in Tokyo (Japan) with Teruhisa Fukuda, Damascus (Syria) with Moslem Rahal and New Delhi (India) with Rajat Prasana; Spain, U.S.A., Mexico, Colombia, with Prónomo in…/Pronomos in…, etc. Julián Elvira is a co-founder of CRASMUSICAS, a multidisciplinary artistic platform that carries out a work concept aimed at promoting and producing shows in the field of contemporary, experimental, and avant-garde music.
www.julianelvira.com
A/B ENSEMBLE
guest resident ensemble
A/B Ensemble is both a programming concept and a space in which to bring it to life.
Under the artistic direction of Pablo Carrascosa Llopis, and with the collaboration of renowned musicians from both the national and international scenes of contemporary music, the collective presents an open and flexible formation in which any instrumental combination is possible.
The group transforms, expands, or contracts—always guided by a distinctive way of programming, producing, and performing concerts. A/B is also strongly connected and committed to the world of recording.