The Faculty of the European Piano Academy of Atlanta:
Katja Cepeda was born in Warendorf with German-Czech heritage. She is fluent in German, English and Czech. She received her first piano lessons at the age of five and graduated with top marks in 2005 at the University of the Arts in Bremen, Germany, in the class of Professor Kurt Seibert. During her studies she worked as a Lied accompanist and chamber music partner. She also accompanied and was musical assistant for various opera productions at the university and accompanied chamber music courses at the international music festival Max Reger Tage in Weiden, Germany. Together with her husband Boris, she founded the Max Reger piano duo in 1998, which has since then performed Reger’s most important works for two pianos in Germany, Southeast Asia, South America, the USA and Israel. As a soloist, she participated in piano projects focused on Beethoven, Brahms and Hanns Eisler. Katja has also been working as a keyboardist in musicals since 2005. She has performed at the Metronom Theater Oberhausen, Admiralspalast, Theater am Potsdamer Platz and Theater des Westens Berlin, Alte Oper Frankfurt, Bregenzer Festspielhaus, Deutsches Theater München and as a tour musician in cities like Hamburg, Luxembourg and Vienna for the productions of “The Beauty and the Beast ”,“ Mamma Mia ”,“ The Shoe of Manitu ”,“ Dirty Dancing ”,“ The Producers ”,“ Dance of the Vampires ”,“ I’ve never been to New York ”,“ Tarzan ”,“ Elisabeth ” and “Cats”. In 2007 Katja accompanied the orchestral auditions for the newly founded Qatar Symphony Orchestra in Vienna and Zurich. From 2013 to 2016 Katja worked as a piano teacher at the public music school Potsdam Mittelmark “Engelbert Humperdinck” in Bad Belzig, Germany. Her students were awarded first prizes as well as grants and scholarships from the music school and Rotary Club. Between June 2016 and June 2019 she was a teacher at the Beckum-Warendorf Music School, the Westphalian School of Music and the Domsingschule in Münster. From 2019 to 2020 she was piano teacher at the German School in Prague, Czech Republic and teacher for piano at the public music school “Kurt Weill” in Dessau, Germany. From February 2021 to July 2022 Katja worked as piano teacher at the public music school “Johann Sebastian Bach” in Potsdam. Before moving to Atlanta, she taught at the public music school in Berlin-Spandau for two years and accompanied the eurythmics classes at the Waldorf School in Berlin-Mitte. 2021 and 2022 she was awarded grants of the government of the Federal State of Brandenburg and the GVL (German Organization for the Management of Perfoming Rights) for recording projects with music for piano four hands by Czech and German composers and the world premiere of music for fortepiano four hands by Maximilian Droste-Hülshoff (1764-1840) on a historical instrument from 1790.
Boris Cepeda
The German-Ecuadorian pianist and conductor Boris Cepeda has distinguished himself as a versatile musician. He was born in Quito in 1974 and first attracted attention when he appeared on Ecuadorian television at the age of 5 as a young and exceptional talent. His worldwide career as a pianist has now lasted over 40 years. He ist the only Ecuadorean pianist, that has performed in prestigious concert halls like Carnegie Hall in New York, Berlin Philharmonie, Konzerthaus Berlin, Laiesz Halle Hamburg, Maria Callas Hall in Athens, Istana Budaya in Kuala Lumpur, Albert-Long-Hall in Istanbul, Min-On Headquarters in Tokyo, Teatro Nacional in Brasilia, CCK in Buenos Aires, Teatro Nacional Sucre or Casa de la Música in Quito. As a conductor of orchestras and choirs, he has been working with great success in opera companies in Germany since 2009. Boris Cepeda was until recently Head of Music and Deputy Choir Director at the Municipal Theater in Münster, Germany since 2016. Cepeda has recorded works by Franz Schubert, Karol Szymanowski, Aribert Reimann, Max Reger and Robert Schumann for Radio Bremen, Bayerischer Rundfunk and DeutschlandRadio. Additional video and audio recordings with music by Chopin, Liszt, Hindemith, Reger, etc. and South American composers can be found on various internet platforms. Boris graduated with top marks at the University of the Arts in Bremen in the class of Professor Kurt Seibert. He received further artistic inspiration from Roberto Bravo, Monique Deschausees, Boris Berman, Hans Leygraf, Hans Pålsson, Christian Zacharias and Chris Elton. He received conducting lessons from Wolfgang Kluge and Prof. Joachim Harder, pupil of Hans Swarowsky. As an accompanist he has performed works by Franz Schubert, Max Reger, Moritz Eggert and Aribert Reimann with great resonance. In 1998 Boris founded the „Max Reger Piano Duo“ together with his wife Katja. In addition to his concert activities, he organizes master classes and lecture concerts in schools, music schools and conservatories in Europe, Asia and South America. He has been a lecturer for orchestral score reading and piano reduction at the Robert Schumann University for Music and Media in Düsseldorf since 2019. In 1999, Boris worked as an assistant to the artistic director at the international music festival Max Reger Tage in Weiden. In the same year he founded and directed the Festival for Ibero-American Music in Bremen. Between June 2002 and August 2007 Boris was Cultural Attaché at the Embassy of the Republic of Ecuador in Berlin. In 2009 he founded the international music festival „Mendelssohnfest“ in Ecuador. Boris is part of the renowned list of Steinway artists since the beginning of 2021. Since 2019 he is writing a doctoral thesis on the composer Maximilian Droste-Hülshoff (1764 – 1840) at the University of Münster. Boris recently moved to Atlanta, GA after obtaining a visa for individuals with extraordinary abilities.