The Ensemble
“What does it matter if you play with the same people in an ensemble for half your life?”
About us
LJO Brass is a brass quintet in which ensemble playing, musical enjoyment and entertainment go hand in hand. Founded in 2007 from the solo brass players of the Rhineland-Palatinate State Youth Orchestra, the ensemble has been one of the most successful young brass ensembles in the whole of Germany for many years – winning numerous awards and giving concerts all over the country.
The line-up of the ensemble has remained unchanged throughout its existence. Over the years, this has resulted in a harmonious, sonorous and virtuoso interplay with complete confidence in the abilities of the players. The players are Felix Schauren and Johannes Leiner on the trumpets, Jared Scott on the horn, Bruno Wipfler on the trombone and Constantin Hartwig on the tuba.
The repertoire of the LJO Brass is broad and varied: concertgoers can hear pieces from the most diverse eras of classical music, from the Renaissance to the Baroque, Romanticism, Impressionism and contemporary music, but the musicians also draw on jazz and popular music in every concert. Their own arrangements and transcriptions are part of the standard repertoire. Ensemble member Johannes Leiner skilfully guides the audience through the program with humour and interesting facts. The brass ensemble also regularly invites guest musicians to its Christmas concerts to enrich the program with a variety of sounds and unusual musical accents.
Achievements
In the course of its existence, LJO Brass has been awarded numerous prizes and scholarships, including a first prize at the national competition Jugend Musiziert (2008), the best placing at the international Jan Koetsier Competition in 2010, including a special prize from Bayerischer Rundfunk, and scholarships from the Zukunftsinitiative Rheinland-Pfalz, the Jürgen Ponto Foundation, the Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben and the Villa Musica Rheinland Pfalz. The ensemble has also performed as a soloist with orchestras such as the Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz and the SWR-Radio-Sinfonieorchester-Stuttgart, the Landesjugendorchester Rheinland-Pfalz and the Bläserphilharmonie Deutsche Weinstraße and has been featured several times in the program of festivals such as the Mosel Music Festival, the Middle Rhine Music Festival, the Hitzacker Music Weeks, the Weilburger Schlosskonzerte, the Kultursommer Nordhessen, the Heidelberger Frühling and the Rheingau Music Festival.
The LJO Brass is grateful to the famous Rennquintett, whose members Uwe Zaiser, Peter Leiner, Uwe Tessmann, Jochen Scheerer and Ralf Rudolph were wonderful musical and human role models and chamber music partners. Peter Leiner in particular was the greatest supporter and mentor for us in the first half of our existence, without whom the ensemble would not exist in this form.
Album von der Jugend (Album from the youth)
With music by The Beatles, J. S. Bach, Hidas, Ewald, and many more.
The Members

Bruno Wipfler
Bruno Wipfler, born in Bad Dürkheim an der Weinstraße in 1994, is the youngest member and trombonist of the ensemble. Most recently, he worked as a process designer and project manager in various parts of public administration.
He discovered the trombone as a musical instrument at the age of six after listening to Benjamin Britten’s “Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra” – in the spirit of its inventor. Today he plays music in a wide variety of styles – from church choral music and Renaissance music to classical, jazz and funk.
Influenced by a musical home, Bruno gained experience in various ensembles at an early age, which he was able to expand with several teachers in the area, until he was finally accepted into the Rhineland-Palatinate State Youth Orchestra as the youngest trombonist ever. Bruno was extremely successful in both the national Jugend musiziert competition and international competitions such as the Lions Music Prize. He was also a junior student in Prof. Henning Wiegräbe’s trombone class at the Stuttgart University of Music and a member of the German National Youth Orchestra and the big band of the free radio station “Wüste Welle”.
Bruno now lives in Stuttgart, where he campaigns for climate protection and trains young trombonists for the local trombone choir, among other things.
Constantin Hartwig
Constantin Hartwig, our original Palatine, comes from beautiful Rhodt unter Rietburg and was born in 1992. It took 13 years for our “tallest” member to pick up the largest brass instrument, the tuba, as he began his musical career on the drums at the age of 8.
Constantin learned the basics of tuba playing from his father, Rainer Hartwig. Shortly afterwards, he switched to Ralf Rudolph, the tuba teacher at the Saarbrücken University of Music, as a junior student. He studied there for another semester as a regular student before starting his studies with Prof. Jens Bjørn-Larsen at the Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media in 2012.
As befits a real tuba player, Constantin grew up with cultivated brass music. Even in his early youth, he played the two to four-note tuba part in almost all the local Palatinate brass bands. But it didn’t stop there – in the years that followed, his musical development was to produce formative successes:
In 2016, Constantin was awarded prizes at both the German Music Competition and the International Aeolus Wind Competition. He subsequently produced his debut CD “Klischee ade” on the GENUIN label and has since performed solo concerts with orchestra or with his piano partner Maria Lebed throughout Germany.


Felix Schauren
Felix was born in 1992 in Lahnstein in the beautiful Middle Rhine Valley and would probably still be banging away on saucepans if he hadn’t discovered the sound of the trumpet at the age of 9.
He had previously devoted himself to playing the drums, but eventually found the lack of “real sounds” boring and therefore went to the Koblenz music school to learn to play the trumpet with Isa Mohr. He soon took part successfully in the Jugend musiziert competition, which helped him become a member of the Rhineland-Palatinate State Youth Orchestra.
There, alongside his quintet colleagues, he also met Prof. Peter Leiner, who first taught him as a junior student and then as a full-time student.
In 2014, he moved to Prof. Robert Hofmann, who also teaches at the HfM Saarbrücken. He has already played as a substitute in the Deutsche Radiophilharmonie Saarbrücken/Kaiserslautern and the Bavarian State Opera and was accepted as a scholarship holder by the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes in 2012. He was a member of the renowned Junge Deutsche Philharmonie.
He also discovered his passion for conducting and music education. He studied conducting with Prof. Toshiyuki Kamioka in Saarbrücken and music teaching in Munich. He devoted himself to his particular passion for new music as conductor of the International Ensemble Modern Academy and also conducted world premieres with ensembles of the Deutsche Radiophilharmonie and the Deutsches Sinfonie Orchester Berlin.
He has conducted the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie, the state youth orchestras of Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland and the Saxon Wind Philharmonic. Felix now works as a conductor and music educator at the Oldenburg State Theater.
Jared Scott
For Jared, it all began on a Swiss train, not in the first class of an SBB carriage, but in the small town near Zurich where he was born in 1991. As you can imagine, this fact has often caused confusion in his CV.
However, Jared actually has American roots, as his parents come from California and Iowa. He set his priorities early on: he started singing first and then crawling. As both his father and mother are professional horn players, it was only a matter of time before he also took up the horn at the age of 9.
After successes at national level and in the “Jugend musiziert” competition, Jared was regularly invited to work with the Rhineland-Palatinate state youth orchestra and the national youth orchestra. At the age of 15, he began a junior study program with Karlsruhe music professor Will Sanders, which turned into a full degree in 2010.
Jared gained orchestral experience as a substitute in the German Radio Philharmonic Orchestra Saarbrücken Kaiserslautern.
He completed his Bachelor’s degree in 2015 at the HfM Saarbrücken under Prof. Sibylle Mahni. He is now continuing his studies there as a Master’s student.


Johannes Leiner
Johannes Leiner was born into a family of musicians in Landau, Palatinate, in 1993. His musical education began at the age of 6 with piano lessons from Inge Wiechmann. Initially taught on the trumpet by his father Peter Leiner, he subsequently switched to Prof. Laura Vukobratovic until he began studying at the Karlsruhe University of Music in Prof. Reinhold Friedrich’s trumpet class in 2012.
Shortly afterwards, however, he initially embarked on a “non-musical” educational path: In the winter semester of 2012/13, he transferred to the University of Heidelberg to study human medicine. Parallel to his medical studies, however, he also resumed his orchestral music studies and was part of Prof. Robert Hofmann’s trumpet class at the Saar University of Music from 2015-2018.
Johannes also spent a long, formative time in the Rhineland-Palatinate State Youth Orchestra and won several state and national prizes in the Jugend musiziert competition for both piano and trumpet.
In recent years, he has performed with the Deutsche Radiophilharmonie Saarbrücken Kaiserslautern, the Saarländisches Staatstheater, the Ensemble Resonanz Hamburg, the Kurpfälzisches Kammerorchester Mannheim and as a soloist with the Mannheimer Kammerphilharmonie, the Kammerorchester Bad Dürkheim, the ensemble “Ricercare” and the chamber orchestra Palatina Klassik.
Johannes has been a licensed doctor since 2019 and works in the field of internal medicine/cardiology in Leipzig. He is a member of the “World Doctors Orchestra” with which he performs in concert halls all over the world, including as a soloist.