The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (OAE) is a British period instrument orchestra. The OAE is a resident orchestra of the Southbank Centre, London, associate orchestra at Glyndebourne Festival Opera and has its headquarters at Kings Place. The leadership is rotated between four musicians, Alison Bury, Matthew Truscott, Kati Debretzeni and Margaret Faultless.
Accademia Bizantina was formed in 1983 with the intent to make music "like a large string quartet", with equal dedication, participation and collective satisfaction.
With the same "chamber" approach today as then, the group is entirely run by the members, who together decide objectives and guidelines.
Since 1996 Ottavio Dantone and Stefano Montanari have collaborated in total harmony to provide the musical direction of the ensemble, covering respectively the roles of music director and of concertmaster, melding together the best of their human and artistic qualities .
The New London Consort (= NLC) is firmly established as one of the world’s leading early music ensembles with a uniquely wide and colourful repertoire of Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque music, much of it unpublished. Directed by Philip Pickett, the NLC has an enviable reputation for the flair, versatility and virtuosity of its members and for consistently presenting interesting and carefully planned programmes which combine the very best in scholarship and entertainment.
Johann Sebastian Bach (21 March 1685, Eisenach O.S. – 28 July 1750 N.S.) was a prolific German composer and organist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity. Although he introduced no new forms, he enriched the prevailing German style with a robust contrapuntal technique, a control of harmonic and motivic organisation from the smallest to the largest scales, and the adaptation of rhythms and textures from abroad, particularly Italy and France.
Richard Tognetti (born 4 August 1965) is an Australian violinist, composer and conductor. He was born in Canberra and raised in Wollongong. He is currently Artistic Director and Leader of the Australian Chamber Orchestra. Tognetti studied at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music with Alice Waten and undertook post-graduate study at the Berne Conservatory with Igor Ozim, where he was awarded the Tschumi prize in 1989.
Born and bred in Swansea, she was educated at Ysgol Gyfun Gŵyr, and then won a choral scholarship to Clare College, Cambridge where she gained a starred first in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic, and completed an MPhil. After auditioning to Sir John Eliot Gardiner she joined the Monteverdi Choir and in the year 2000 and sang much of the Bach Cantata Pilgrimage. In 2001 she moved to pursue postgraduate vocal studies at the Royal College of Music in London, and went on to sing with The Sixteen, Polyphony, Cambridge Singers and The Gabrieli Consort, as well as pursuing a solo career.
Masaaki Suzuki is an organist, harpsichordist and conductor, and the founder and musical director of the Bach Collegium Japan. He was born in Kobe to parents who were both Christian and amateur musicians. He studied composition and organ at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, and was later taught harpsichord and organ by Ton Koopman and Piet Kee at the Sweelink Conservatory in Holland. In 1993 he began teaching at Kobe University, and founded the Bach Collegium in 1990. The group began giving concerts regularly in 1992, and made its first recordings three years later.
Grace grew up in London where she was born in 1977. She gained her BMus and postgraduate degrees at the Royal Academy of Music where she studied with Beatrice Unsworth and Jonathan Papp. Whilst at The Academy she won the Early Music Prize and was a finalist in the London Handel Festival. Having been greatly in demand as a consort singer with all the UK’s leading ensembles, including The English Concert,The Gabrieli Consort, The Monteverdi Choir, Ex Cathedra, Alamire, The Tallis Scholars...
