The name of the ensemble founded in 2011 is a wordplay that alludes to its identity and history. The letters G.A.P. not only reveal the initials of the baroque violinist and composer Giovanni Antonio Piani, whose violin sonatas configured the Ensembles’s first CD in a world premiere recording back in 2012. They also point out the Ensemble’s intention to close the existing gaps between the different musical eras and their styles, the musicological knowledge and the art behind live performance and, ultimately, the artist and his audience. Playing pieces of different periods on both historical and modern instruments is one way to achieve this. The rest is the art to build musical bridges: the beautiful task to make history contemporary to our audience.

 

Working with artists like Viktoria Mullova, Daniel Hope, Cecilia Bartoli, Christophe Rousset, Maurice Steger, Dorothee Mields, Valer Sabadus, Julia Lezhneva and Hille Perl as well as performances at some of the most renowned concert halls in the world, for example Berliner Philharmonie, Teatro Colon Buenos Aires, Tokyo Opera City Center Hall and Palau de la Musica Barcelona, are only one part of the experiences that the members bring to the joint work. For the performance of larger repertoire such as operas, oratorios, cantatas and instrumental works, the ensemble takes the form of a chamber orchestra.

In April 2019 the G.A.P. Ensemble performed together with recorder player Maurice Steger on various important concert podiums in Germany. In June 2019, string and wind concerts by Vivaldi, Bach and Telemann were performed in an expanded instrumentation at the Brühler Schlosskonzerte. As part of the Handel Day, organized by the Händel-Festspiele Halle in 2020, a concert of the G.A.P. Ensemble with Valer Sabadus was broadcast in a live stream. Furthermore, the G.A.P. Ensemble performed with great success at the festival Tage Alter Musik in Herne (WDR), the Festival de Saintes in France and the Mosel-Musikfestival in Kloster Machern with a special Bach Shostakovich program with the soprano Dorothee Mields .
 

The three CD productions “Affettuoso”, “I musicisti del imperatore” and “Vivaldi per Pisendel” received unanimous praise from the press (Diapason, Strad, Gramophone, Fanfare, Web music international, etc.). Since 2013 the G.A.P. Ensemble works closely with the Italian soprano Raffaella Milanesi, the succesful cooperation was crowned in 2014 with the world premiere recording of the cantatas by Piani, Caldara and Alessandro Scarlatti and was also highly praised by the critics. The recording of Antonio Vivaldi’s violin sonatas dedicated to his friend Johann Georg Pisendel, a known violin virtuoso and concert master of the Sächsische Hofkapelle in Dresden, received international acclaim and was awarded with the distinction “5 de Diapason” by the Diapason Magazine: “The G.A.P. Ensemble creates jewels of subtlety (…) These long underestimated pieces of Vivaldi’s work have finally met their match.”
 

Emilio Percan has been performing as concertmaster and soloist with various European orchestras since 2006, collaborating with such artists as Daniel Hope (double concertos), Simone Kermes, Edita Gruberova, Daniel Müller-Schott and Chen Reiss. He has had numerous engagements throughout Europe and in South America (Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires), Japan, China, Israel and the USA. In 2013 he embarked on a European tour with concertos for two violins with the violinist Viktoria Mullova and, in 2014, presented a series of concerts and master courses in the Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan and Russia at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, the St. Petersburg Conservatory and at the Gnesin Institute in Moscow, amongst other institutions. Emilio Percan was appointed as guest professor for violin and chamber music at the Moscow State University for Art and Culture in 2012. He has been teaching the violin at the University of Music and the Performing Arts Graz since March 2015. He received his first violin instruction at the age of seven in Skopje, Macedonia. A master class of the former Kogan pupil Isabela Golovina impressed him so profoundly that he began studying with her in Moscow in 1999. In 2001 Emilio Percan finally arrived at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen, where he studied violin with Prof. Pieter Daniel (a pupil of Henryk Szeryng and Dorothy Delay), chamber music with Prof. Dirk Mommertz (Fauré Piano Quartet) and baroque violin with Stephan Schardt (Musica Antiqua Cologne).

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The Catalan born cellist Oriol Aymat Fusté is a member of Dani Espasa's ensemble Vespres d’Arnadí since 2012. He has collaborated with l’Arte del Mondo, MUSica ALcheMIca, Elbipolis, Catalan Barroque Orchestra, Le Tendre Amour, Contratemps and played with soloists like Lina Tur Bonet, Farran Sylvan James, Xavier Sabata, Maria Hinojosa, Jordi Domènech, Christoph Prégardien, Stephan MacLeod, Marta Matheu and Josep Ramon Oliver. He has performed throughout Europe as well as China, Japan, Israel and Cuba. In the modern scene, he is part of Montsant Quintett and Lleidart Ensemble as well as solo cellist of the Camerata XXI Orchestra and playes with rellevant musicians like Albert Guinovart, Carles Marigó or Marta Cardona. He also creates and performs music for film, theater and dance, and works with artists of the popular music scene such as Sílvia Pérez Cruz, Maika Makovski. His own pop band Blaumut has been actively touring since 2013 and features 5 Cd. Oriol Aymat was awarded a British grant and scholarships from foundations Alexander von Humboldt, Pau Casals and Sofia Puche to study with Leonid Gorokhov at the Yehudi Menuhin School, U. K., and with Young-Chang Cho at Folkwang University in Essen, Germany. He was awarded several prizes in national and international competitions, like the European Youth Cello Competition.

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