Jürgen Gross studied violin and music pedagogy with Isabella Petrosjan in his hometown of Hamburg. His intense interest in the baroque violin led him to studies with Thomas Albert at the University of the Arts in Bremen and later to the Institute for Early Music in Trossingen.

In 1999, he founded the Elbipolis Barockorchester Hamburg, with which he performs extensively throughout Germany and beyond. In recent years, the ensemble has toured to Switzerland, Sweden, Belgium, France, Czechia, Brazil, and southeast Asia.

Jürgen Groß is also regularly active as a coach and guest concertmaster for baroque and classical projects, for example at the Orchestra Academy of the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival or at the University of Music in Nuremberg.

After training in choral conducting and violin at the Vocational School for Music in Dinkelsbühl, he studied "historical performance practice" at the Academy of Ancient Music / Hochschule für Künste in Bremen at Prof.Thomas Albert. Award by the Arts & Cultural Foundation of Sparkasse Bremen with the loan of a violin by Jacob Stainer, Absam 1680. Jochen Green as soloist and leader in the European music festivals present.

After her piano and music theory studies in Berlin, Veronika Braß dealt intensively with historical performance practice in general, and the harpsichord or fortepiano game in particular. She deepened her knowledge at Mitzy Meyerson in Berlin, with Jesper Christensen at the Schola Cantorum in Basel and at Christine Schornsheim in Leipzig; so she won the university competition in the subject "Early Music Ensemble". Engagements as a harpsichord-accompanist and chamber musician at international competitions and festivals followed. She is a lecturer in music theory and coaching specialist in historical performance practice at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Munich. Her chamber music partners include Peter Kooj and Christine Busch; with Christoph Poppen and the Munich Chamber Orchestra she joined a long cooperation. Furthermore, she guested with the Potsdam Chamber Academy and the RIAS Chamber Choir. Since 2006 she has been a member of the Ensemble "Spirit of musicke" (www.spirit-of-musicke.com), which specializes in the performance of music by women composers. At the center of her artistic work for some years is the successful cooperation with her duo partner Jochen Green and the Baroque Orchestra Elbipolis that led them to several countries in Europe.

A baroque orchestra at the gateway to the world: this is how Elbipolis sees itself. It is no coincidence that the ensemble is named after the great Hanseatic port it calls home: Elbipolis – City on the Elbe. Hamburg.

The musicians of the orchestra – all specialists in baroque music – demonstrate their zeal for new musical discoveries in projects that reach beyond the boundaries of standard repertoire, and they have been rewarded with success and accolades from connoisseurs and enthusiasts. From guest appearances at the Kölner Philharmonie or on the North German Radio (NDR) programme “Das Alte Werk” to regular performances at the Handel Festivals in Halle and Göttingen, at the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, or in the halls of the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, Elbipolis is by now a well-established presence on German concert stages. The ensemble is also internationally sought-after: extensive concert tours across Europe have led Elbipolis to the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels and the West Cork Music Festival in Ireland, among others. At the invitation of the Goethe Institute, the orchestra has toured to Brazil and Southeast Asia. Passion for the musical history of one’s own region and a cosmopolitan worldview are not mutually exclusive. Both the identification of this Hamburg ensemble with the repertoire of its city as well as its openness to unconventional programmes have shaped its discography. Its debut CD Don Quichotte in Hamburg (2007), featuring music by Georg Philipp Telemann, Johann Mattheson, and Francesco Bartolomeo Conti, was warmly received by listeners and critics alike; subsequent productions

with similarly close ties to the ensemble’s home city include the CD Musik der Hamburger Pfeffersäcke (2008) and a recording of Johann Christian Schieferdecker’s Musicalischen Concerte (2011). In 2013, Elbipolis released Undercover Bach, an album of arrangements and original versions of orchestral suites and concertos by Johann Sebastian Bach. Its next CD, Sinfonies pour les soupers du Roy (2016), offered reconstructions of instrumental suites that had been composed by Michel-Richard Delalande (1657–1726) for the Sun King Louis XIV. These works have only survived to the present day in the form of a partition réduite, but Jörg Jacobi’s reconstruction of the missing parts has allowed modern listeners to hear this music for the first time in its full five-voice setting, as intended by the composer but only implicit in the reduced original score.

Alongside its work as a purely instrumental ensemble, Elbipolis performs in opera productions and choral projects with equal parts passion and dedication. The ensemble as a large orchestra has collaborated with Philipp Ahmann (NDR Choir) and the sopranos Nuria Rial and Deborah York, among others. Elbipolis takes a special interest in cultivating enthusiasm for early music in younger audiences. In 2008, the ensemble established the highly successful concert series “Baroque Lounge”, in which it collaborated with Brezel Göring (Stereo Total), Johannes Malfatti, Tim Exile, DJ Ipek, and other leading artists of the electronic music scene. For other ensembles and event organisers, this innovative format has come to serve as a model of how traditional concert formats can further evolve. In 2020, Elbipolis was awarded funding from the Federal Commissioner for Culture and Media (Neustart Kultur) for “Aus der Tiefe”, a Germany-wide concert series featuring cantatas by J. S. Bach. A new round of grants in 2022 enabled the realisation of the follow-up project “Mehr Bach!”, comprising a concert tour through northern Germany and the recording of the present disc.