Elina Buksha Grégoire Vecchioni Caroline Sypniewski Charlotte Chahuneau
Created in 2025, the Lakmé Quartet brings together Elina Buksha, Charlotte Chahuneau, Grégoire Vecchioni, Caroliine Sypnewski, recognized in their careers as soloists and chamber musicians (Mona Quartet, Van Kuijk Quartet, Trio Sypniewski, Capucelli).
The four musicians were trained as a quartet by Günter Pichler at the Escuela Reina Sofia Madrid.
The Lakmé Quartet is in residence at the Singer-Polignac Foundation in Paris.
Elina Buksha was born in Riga
She is a laureate of the 2019 Kulturkreis Gasteig Musikpreis in Munich. She trained under Augustin Dumay at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel, Christophe Poppen at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München and then with the famous violinist Midori and Ana Chumachenko. She has performed at Wigmore Hall London, Auditorium du Louvre Paris, Laeiszhalle Hamburg, Palais de Beaux Arts Brussels, Tchaikovsky Concert Hall Moscow and as a soloist with the orchestras I Virtuosi del Teatro alla Scala, Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège and many others. E.Buksha is also the curator of a project that revolves around music and perfumes. Elina plays a Vincenzo Panormo violin from 1800, generously loaned by the Harrison Frank Foundation.
Described by Strad Magazine as a musician with "a capacity for fantasy and storytelling," "intensely convincing in her technical agility and individuality."
studied with Latica Honda-Rosenberg at the Universität der Künste Berlin and Eberhard Feltz at Hanns Eisler Berlin. She is the winner of the Villa Musica Stern Prize 2020, was engaged for several years at the Staatskapelle Berlin under the direction of Daniel Barenboim before joining the Paris Opera. She also plays regularly with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and as a chamber musician in major European festivals such as Open Chamber Music Prussia Cove, Rencontres Musicales d'Evian, Festival Salon de Provence, Festival d'Aix-en-Provence. She has shared the stage with Pinchas Zukerman, Jens Peter Maintz, Éric Le Sage, Quatuor Modigliani, among others. As part of the Mona Quartet, she has also performed at the Biennale of the String Quartet Philharmonie de Paris, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Philharmonie du Luxembourg. C. Chahuneau holds a Master's degree in Political Arts from Sciences Po Paris, directed by the philosopher Bruno Latour.
Grégoire Vecchioni, appointed 1st principal viola of the Paris Opera by Gustavo Dudamel in 2022, is recognized as one of the most talented violists of his generation. A founding member of the Van Kuijk quartet, with which he won first prize at the Wigmore Hall String Quartet Competition, he has also shared the stage with the Modigliani, Ebène and Belcea quartets and regularly collaborates with Liya Petrova , Alexandre Kantorow, Aurélien Pascal, Béatrice Rana , Adam Laloum . Trained with Françoise Gneri at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Lyon and Gérard Caussé and Antoine Tamestit at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, he has been teaching at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris since 2023 as assistant professor in Françoise Gnéri's class.
Caroline Sypniewski was named Classical Revelation by Adami (2017) and Young Talent of the Fête de la Musique et du Vin at Clos-Vougeot (2019), and received the Ginette Neveu Prize from the Carl Flesch Academy (2015) and the Grand Prix from the Ravel Academy (2018). She performs as a soloist and chamber musician in numerous festivals such as the Easter Festival in Aix-en-Provence, Verbier, Prades, Deauville, the Radio-France Festival in Montpellier and in the major venues of the Victoria Hall in Geneva, the Opéra Garnier, the Philharmonie de Paris, and Schloss Elmau. She has shared the stage with Alexandre Kantorow, Renaud Capuçon, Gautier Capuçon, Emmanuel Pahud, and the Modigliani Quartet . She also founded the Sypniewski Trio with her two sisters and regularly plays in Gautier Capuçon's Capucelli cello ensemble. She has also performed as a soloist with the Baden-Baden Philharmonic Orchestra, the Dijon-Bourgogne Orchestra, and many others. She studied with Jérôme Pernoo at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris and then perfected her skills in Gautier Capuçon 's class of excellence at the Fondation Louis Vuitton and with Clemens Hagen at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. She has also won prizes for piano and accompaniment alongside her cello studies.