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”.

Wouter Verschuren graduated from the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. He studied baroque and classical bassoon with Donna Agrell. Wouter is sought after in the Netherlands and abroad as a bassoonist, and is equally at home with repertoire ranging from the Renaissance to the Romantic. He is principal bassoonist of The Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra conducted by Ton Koopman, and regularly plays with other renowned period orchestras. In addition, he regularly appears as a soloist, and plays in numerous international chamber music ensembles such as Caecilia-Concert, specializing in performance and research of 17th century music, and can be heard on countless CDs. Wouter teaches at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague and at the Utrecht Conservatory.

James Gilchrist began his working life as a doctor, turning to a full-time career in music in 1996. His musical interest was fired at a young age, singing first as a chorister in the choir of New College, Oxford, and later as a choral scholar at King’s College, Cambridge.
James’ extensive concert repertoire has seen him perform in major concert halls throughout the world with conductors including Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Sir Roger Norrington, Bernard Labadie, Harry Christophers, Harry Bicket and the late Richard Hickox. In J.S. Bach’s great Passions of St John and St Matthew, James works consistently at the highest level and is recognised as the finest Evangelist of his generation; as one recent BBC Proms reviewer noted, "he hasn’t become a one-man Evangelist industry by chance".
A prolific and versatile recitalist, James enjoys imaginative and varied programming in collaborations with pianists Anna Tilbrook and Julius Drake, and harpist Alison Nicholls. James returned to the Wigmore Hall to begin his project with Anna Tilbrook, Schumann and the English Romantics, pairing Schumann song cycles with new commissions from leading composers, Sally Beamish, Julian Philips and Jonathan Dove, setting English poetry of the Romantic period.
James’ impressive discography includes the title role in Albert Herring and Vaughan Williams’ A Poisoned Kiss, St John Passion with the Academy of Ancient Music, the Finzi song cycle Oh Fair To See, When Laura Smiles with Matthew Wadsworth, Leighton Earth Sweet Earth, Vaughan Williams On Wenlock Edge, Finzi songs, Britten’s Winter Words and the critically-acclaimed recordings of Schubert’s song cycles.

The repertoire of the Dutch soprano Johannette Zomer ranges from medieval music through all music of the baroque and classical eras, including opera, but also Lieder, French Romanticism and Contemporary music. Johannette’s concert appearances are also many and various. She has worked with Baroque specialists such as Philippe Herreweghe, Ton Koopman, Frans Brüggen, René Jacobs, Reinard Goebel and Paul McCreesh, but has also worked with conductors including Kent Nagano, Ivan Fisher,Daniel Harding, Valery Gergiev, Reinbert de Leeuw and Peter Eötvös. She regularly gives recitals accompanied by theorbo player Fred Jacobs or fortepiano specialist Arthur Schoonderwoerd.
Johannette made her opera debut as Tebaldo in Verdi’s Don Carlo with the Nationale Reisopera in October 1996. Since then she has made regular appearances in roles including Belinda, Pamina, La Musica, Euridice, Dalinda and Ilia, and also as Amanda in Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre and Mélisande in Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande.
Regularly she contributes to recording projects. A few of her releases – all very well received in both press and radio – are the Bach Cantatas album with the English ensemble Florilegium for which she won an Edison Award, the album With Endless Teares with theorbist Fred Jacobs, showing the development of English 17th Century Song, and the album Love & Madness, an album with Händel aria’s together with Bart Schneemann, oboe.
In 2013 she founded her own ensemble the Tulipa Consort. She has performed with this ensemble at the Göttinger Handel Festspiele and in Amsterdam with Dutch oboist Bart Schneemann.

Swedish soprano Lisa Larsson started her career as a flautist and studied singing in Basel. Her first engagement was at the Zurich Opera House, where she performed under a number of conductors including Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Franz Welser-Möst. Following her debut at La Scala in Milan in ›The Magic Flute‹ under Riccardo Muti, she swiftly developed her international opera career, in particular as a Mozart singer performing parts such as Susanna, Pamina, Zaide, Zerlina, Servilia, Ilia, Fortuna and Ismene; other roles included Marzelline, Anne Trulove, Ännchen, Eurydice, Adele, Adina, Oscar, Xenia, Tytania, Polissena and Morgana. She appeared at renowned European opera houses including the Bavarian State Opera, the Royal Opera House in London, the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, the Royal Danish Opera, the Opéra de Monte-Carlo, the Leipzig Opera, the Grand Théâtre de Genève, the Royal Swedish Opera and the Theater Basel as well as at the Salzburg Festival, the Lucerne Festival, the Glyndebourne Festival and the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence.
Lisa Larsson is also a remarkably versatile concert singer of international renown. In recent years she has constantly expanded her broad repertoire with works by Mahler, Richard Strauss, Brahms, Berlioz, Britten and Stravinsky, and has performed in a number of world premieres of contemporary works. Conductors she has worked with include Claudio Abbado, Sir Colin Davis, Daniel Harding, Adam Fischer, Mikhail Pletnev, David Zinman, Antonello Manacorda, Lawrence Renes, Massimo Zanetti, Louis Langrée, Douglas Boyd, Juanjo Mena, Christian Arming, Andrew Manze, Stefan Solyom, Vassily Sinaisky and Edo de Waart. Lisa Larsson has performed with leading orchestras including the Berlin Philharmonic, the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Munich Philharmonic, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the Orchestre National de Lyon, the Netherlands Philharmonic, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, the Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo, the NHK Symphony Orchestra and the New Japan Philharmonic.
In the field of baroque music, she has often worked with leading conductors and their orchestras, including Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Sir Roger Norrington, Christopher Hogwood, Frans Brüggen, Andrea Marcon, Emmanuelle Haïm, Ton Koopman, Nathalie Stutzmann, Nicholas McGegan, Paul Goodwin, Martin Haselböck, Gottfried von der Goltz, Trevor Pinnock, Richard Egarr, Fabio Bonizzoni, Jan Willem de Vriend and David Stern.
Highlights of her 2014 | 2015 season include two world premieres of works dedicated to her by Swedish composer Rolf Martinsson: “Ich denke Dein…” for soprano and orchestra, commissioned by the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, and “Garden of Devotion” for soprano and string orchestra, commissioned by the Swedish ensemble Musica Vitae.
“Ich denke Dein…” will be first performed by the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra and conducted by John Storgårds who will also lead the Finnish premiere with the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra. The Dutch premiere will be with the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra under its chief conductor Marc Albrecht in Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw. More performances are planned for future seasons with the Philharmonia Orchestra, Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi, Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Malmö Symphony Orchestra and Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra.
"Garden of Devotion" will be first performed on tour in Sweden by Musica Vitae and conducted by Nathalie Stutzmann. Further performances are scheduled with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra under Olari Elts as well as the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra under Stefan Solyom. More performances in future seasons are planned with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, Staatskapelle Weimar and the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra.
Lisa Larsson will continue her many years of collaboration with Antonello Manacorda in performances of Beethoven’s 9th symphony in the Netherlands as well as Alban Berg’s “Seven Early Songs” and Mahler’s 4th symphony with the BBC Philharmonic. She will also sing the Berg cycle with Vasily Petrenko and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra at the Prague Spring Festival and in Liverpool. Performances of Mahler’s 2nd symphony, conducted by Stefan Asbury, are planned for a tour in Holland. Other projects she is looking forward to are two new recital programmes with concerts in Italy together with Andrea Lucchesini and in Switzerland with Roland Pöntinen.
Recent additions to her substantial discography are two Challenge Classics releases: A Haydn album with the Combattimento Consort Amsterdam under the direction of Jan Willem de Vriend as well as Berlioz programme with the Arnhem Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Antonello Manacorda who is also the conductor of her next CD to be released on the same label in the autumn of 2014 and featuring Mahler’s 4th symphony combined with a selection of “Wunderhorn” songs by Mahler. In spring 2015 she will record Rolf Martinsson’s “Orchestral Songs on Poems by Emily Dickens” with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra under Andrew Manze for BIS Records. Her other recordings include Strauss‘ ›Four Last Songs‹ under Douglas Boyd, Mahler’s 8th symphony under David Zinman, the Mozart operas ›Don Giovanni‹ under Daniel Harding, ›Mitridate‹ under Adam Fischer, ›Il sogno di Scipione‹ under Gottfried von der Goltz, Händel‘s ›Jephta‹ under David Stern as well as numerous Bach Cantatas under Sir John Eliot Gardiner and Ton Koopman. With the latter she also recorded Bach’s Christmas and Easter Oratorio as well as the Magnificat.

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.