Johan­na Rup­pert, vio­lin, and Jes­si­ca Kaiser, gui­tar, are both con­sid­ered as excep­tion­al tal­ents on their instru­ments, being suc­cess­ful musi­cians of the young gen­er­a­tion. Togeth­er they per­form as the Duo Karuna, which was found­ed in 2016 dur­ing their stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Music and Per­form­ing Arts in Graz/Austria. The duo received musi­cal impuls­es from pianist Clau­dia Michelet­ti as well as Prof. Pao­lo Pego­raro and Prof. Thomas Müller-Pering.

As a result of their deep and intu­itive musi­cal under­stand­ing for each oth­er, they soon achieved their first joint suc­cess at the 14th Inter­na­tion­al Enri­co Mer­catali Com­pe­ti­tion in Gorizia/Italy, where they won the 3rd prize in the cham­ber music clas­si­fi­ca­tion in May 2017, as well as at the Bra­ga Inter­na­tion­al Cham­ber Music Com­pe­ti­tion in Por­tu­gal in Feb­ru­ary 2018. Their lat­est achieve­ment was the 1st prize at the North Inter­na­tion­al Music Com­pe­ti­tion in May 2018.

In March 2017 they per­formed their inter­na­tion­al debut con­cert at the Segovia Inter­na­tion­al Gui­tar Week in Pordenone/Italy. In Decem­ber 2017, they have been invit­ed to per­form at the VIII Fes­ti­val Inter­na­cional “Fun­dación Mon­teLeón” de Músi­ca de Cámara in León/Spain.

The duo is con­sis­tent­ly charm­ing audi­ences with con­cert pro­grammes includ­ing orig­i­nal works of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, as well as their own tran­scrip­tions of dif­fer­ent styles, allow­ing them to tap the full poten­tial of the inti­mate, yet spir­it­ed com­bi­na­tion of the two instruments.

The name Karuna (feel­ing togeth­er) describes their aim to expe­ri­ence music as a shared sen­sa­tion with the listener.