Ton Koopman is a leading figure in Early Music and historically informed performance practice. As organist and harpsichordist Ton Koopman has performed all over the world and played the most beautiful historical instruments of Europe. His Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir has gained worldwide fame as one of the best ensembles on period instruments. Between 1994 and 2004 Ton Koopman and ABO&C have recorded all sacred and secular cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach, an extraordinary project that earned international acclaim. After that Koopman recorded the complete works by Bach’s predecessor, Dieterich Buxtehude. Besides performing as a soloist and with his ABO&C, Ton Koopman is very active as a guest conductor for modern orchestras and also devotes part of his time to teaching. Ton Koopman is president of the International Dieterich Buxtehude Society and, since 2019, president of the Leipzig Bach Archiv.

Ton Koopman founded the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra in 1979. The group consists of internationally renowned baroque specialists who meet up several times a year and work together to prepare and perform new exciting programmes. For the musicians each concert is a new experience and Koopman's boundless energy and enthusiasm are a sure guarantee of the highest quality.
The Amsterdam Baroque Choir was founded in 1992 and it made its debut during the Holland Festival of Early Music in Utrecht performing the world première of the Requiem (for 15 voices) and Vespers (for 32 voices) by H.I.F. Biber. The recording of both of these works won the Cannes Classical Award for the best performance of 17th/18th century choral music. For its rare combination of textural clarity and interpretative flexibility, the Amsterdam Baroque Choir is considered among today’s most outstanding choirs. In 1994 Ton Koopman and the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir embarked upon the most ambitious recording project of the last decades: the integral recording of Bach’s secular and sacred cantatas. For this extraordinary project Koopman and his ensemble received the Deutsche Schallplatten-Preis Echo Klassik. Next to the CD recordings three books have been edited and published by Ton Koopman and the musicologist Christoph Wolff and a series of six documentaries was produced and broadcasted by various TV stations.
Alongside Bach’s music the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir has recorded all major baroque and classical works. Major recognitions include the Gramophone Award, Diapason d'Or, 10-Repertoire, Stern des Monats-Fono Forum, the Prix Hector Berlioz and two Edison Awards. In 2008 the ensemble and Ton Koopman have been honoured with the prestigious BBC Award. Since March 2003 “Antoine Marchand”, a new sub-label of Challenge Classics, took over the release of Koopman’s new recordings and among many others has published 22 CD boxes of the Bach Cantatas, a new recording of the St. Matthew Passion (on CD and DVD) and St. Markus Passion of J.S. Bach (DVD), live recorded in Milan, as well as the first seven volumes of the Buxtehude Opera-Omnia Edition. Ton Koopman and the ABO & ABC are regular guests at the major concert halls of Europe, the USA and Japan. In the 2008/09 season they will tour extensively in Europe (Amsterdam, Paris, Madrid, Vienna, Milan, Cologne, Dresden, Düsseldorf etc) and in Far East with concerts in Hong Kong, Seoul and Tokyo.

Bass-baritone Klaus Mertens is celebrated by critics as an “excellent master of his craft” for his “unique power of expression, his congenial timbre, his keen intuition for text, as well as his convincing manner of making music”. He has recorded more than 200 CDs, including the entire works of Johann Sebastian Bach and Dietrich Buxtehude. These testify eloquently to his art of singing, which spans a great arch from Monteverdi to his contemporaries. Characterized as “the most significant Telemann interpreter of our time”, Mertens received the Telemann prize of the city of Magdeburg in 2016. In 2019, he was honored with the renowned Bach medal of the city of Leipzig as the “ideal interpreter of Bach’s cantatas and passion texts”.

Reine-Marie Verhagen studied the recorder with Pieter van Veen and Walter van Hauwe and graduated in 1976. She is a regular member of the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, conducted by Ton Koopman. With the ensemble La Sfera Armoniosa conducted by Mike Fentross she performed several 17th century operas. For the past 10 years she has also regularly performed 17th-18th and 20th-century music in San Francisco, Amherst, Boston, and New York.
Verhagen takes keen interest in the contemporary repertoire. For the Steve Reich festival at the Royal Conservatory at The Hague in December 2003, she made a very successful transcription of his Vermont Counterpoint for solo recorder and an 11-member recorder ensemble. This composition was also performed in October 2007 at the International Minimal Music Festival in Kassel, Germany, in combination with the premiere of a new minimal composition, written for Reine-Marie Verhagen, by Ulli Goette: “Mural”.
Not confining herself exclusively to musical performance, Reine-Marie Verhagen was a co-founder and former member of the board of the Dutch branch of the ERTA

The Scottish tenor, Paul Agnew, read music as a Choral Scholar at Magdalen College, Oxford. After earning his degree, he became associated with the Consort of Musicke, and remained a member of this wonderful early music ensemble for many productive years. At these early stages of his career, he has also made numerous appearances with The Tallis Scholars (Director: Peter Phillips), The Sixteen (Director: Harry Christophers) and the Gothic Voices, before finally striking out on his own as a soloist in the early 1990's.

The Swiss lyric tenor, Jörg Dürmüller, studied violin and voice at the Winterthur Conservatoire in Switzerland with Ruth Binder (1977-1982), and with a scholarship of the Migros-Genossenschafts-Bund at the Academy of Music and Theatre in Hamburg with Naan Pöld, Hans Kagel and Hertha Werner (1982-1987). He attended master-classes given by Edith Mathis, Christa Ludwig and Hermann Prey.
Jörg Dürmüller's first opera-engagement led him in 1987 to the Bielefeld City Theatre, where he was a member of the ensemble for five years. From 1995 to 1997 he was engaged as the first tenor at the Brunswick State Theatre under Kammersängerin Brigitte Fassbaender. He appeared also at the State Opera of Hamburg, and at the Theatre in Revier Gelsenkirchen. In 1996 he appeared as a guest at the Comic Opera Berlin in the role of Fernando in Così fan tutte produced by Harry Kupfer, and at the National Theatre of Braunschweig as Andres in Wozzeck by Alban Berg. In 2002 and 2003 he sang the role of Bajazete in George Frideric Handel’s Tamerlano also at the Opera Comique Berlin directed by David Alden.

The Polish mezzo-soprano and contralto, Bogna Bartosz, after leaving school, first studied singing at the Academy of Music in Gdansk (and/or Danzig Music Academy). After graduating with distinction, she continued her studies at the Hochschule der Künste Berlin (Berlin Academy of Arts) under Professor Ingrid Figur, and took part in master-classes with Aribert Reimann, Adele Stolte and Anna Reynolds. At the 9th International J.S. Bach Competition in Leipzig in 1992, Bogna Bartosz won first prize, as well as the special prize awarded by the MDR broadcasting organization in Leipzig.
Since then Bogna Bartosz has sung with well-known orchestras (including Berliner Barock Orchester, Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, Musica Antiqua Köln, Kammersolisten der Deutschen Oper Berlin, Radio-Symphonie-Orchester-Berlin, Gewandhaus- orchester Leipzig, MDR Sinfonieorchester Leipzig, Dresdner Philharmoniker and Württembergisches Kammerorchester, Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, Israel Chamber Orchestra Tel Aviv, Japan Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra) and leading conductors (including Horia Andrescu, Moche Atzmon, Marcus Creed, Philippe Entremont, Jörg Faerber, Enoch zu Guttenberg, Philippe Herreweghe, Marek Janowski, Ton Koopman, Krzysztof Penderecki, Helmuth Rilling, Jeffrey Tate, Marcello Viotti, Lothar Zagrosek, Udo Zimmermann), in all the major concert halls in Germany (such as Berliner Philharmonie, Berliner Konzerthaus, Leipziger Gewandhaus, Alte Oper Frankfurt, Kölner Philharmonie, Tonhalle Düsseldorf, Glocke Bremen, Hamburger Musikhalle, Liederhalle Stuttgart), as well as in Europe, the USA and Israel, and at numerous major festivals.

Born in Rome, Alfredo Bernardini moved to Holland at the age of twenty to specialize in the baroque oboe and Early Music at the Royal Conservatory at the Hague, studying with Bruce Haynes and Ku Ebbinge, among others. Today Bernardini is recognized as one of the foremost baroque oboe specialists in the world. The leading Early Music groups with which he has performed include Hesperion XX, Le Concert Des Nations, La Petite Bande, Das Freiburger Barockorchester, The English Concert, Bach Collegium Japan, and The Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra.
In 1989, together with the brothers Paolo and Alberto Grazzi, he founded the ensemble ZEFIRO, which has gained international acclaim. Bernardini’s numerous recordings have received important prizes, including the Cannes Classical Awards in 1995 for Vivaldi’s Concertos for Oboe on the Astrèe Naìve label. He has performed regularly as guest leader of baroque ensembles in Europe, Canada, Australia, Cuba, and Israel, and with the European Union Baroque Orchestra. In January 2013 he led the first baroque orchestra in the internationally renowned project El Sistema de Musica in Venezuela. In addition to his performance career, Bernardini researches the history of wind instruments and makes copies of historical oboes, and as of 2014 he is professor of baroque oboe at the Mozarteum in Salzburg.
Since 2009 he has been a much beloved guest leader for Barokkanerne, and he can also be heard on two of our earlier releases, “Empfindsamkeit!” (LAWO, 2013) and “TotallyTelemann” (LAWO, 2015).