Ton Koopman was born in Zwolle in 1944. After a classical education he studied organ, harpsichord and musicology in Amsterdam and was awarded the Prix d'Excellence for both instruments. From the beginning of his musical studies he was fascinated by authentic instruments and a performance style based on sound scholarship and in 1969, at the age of 25, he created his first Baroque orchestra. In 1979 he founded the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra followed by the Amsterdam Baroque Choir in 1992.
Koopman's extensive and impressive activities as a soloist, accompanist and conductor have been recorded on a large number of LPs and CDs for labels like Erato, Teldec, Sony, Philips and DG, besides his own record label “Antoine Marchand”, distributed by Challenge Records.
Over the course of a forty-five-year career Ton Koopman has appeared in the most important concert halls and festivals of the five continents. As an organist he has performed on the most prestigious historical instruments of Europe, and as a harpsichord player and conductor of the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir he has been a regular guest at venues which include the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Théatre des Champs-Elysées in Paris, the Philharmonie in Munich, the Alte Oper in Frankfurt, the Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall in New York and leading concert halls in Vienna, London, Berlin, Brussels, Madrid, Rome, Salzburg, Tokyo and Osaka.
Between 1994 and 2004 Ton Koopman has been engaged in a unique project, conducting and recording all the existing Cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach, a massive undertaking for which he has been awarded the Deutsche Schallplattenpreis "Echo Klassik", the BBC Award 2008, the Prix Hector Berlioz, has been nominated for the Grammy Award (USA) and the Gramophone Award (UK). In 2000 Ton Koopman has received an Honorary Degree from the Utrecht University for his academic work on the Bach Cantatas and Passions and has been awarded both the prestigious Silver Phonograph Prize and the VSCD Classical Music Award. In 2006 he has received the « Bach-Medaille » from the City of Leipzig. Recently Ton Koopman has embarked on another main project: the recording of the whole works by Dietrich Buxtehude, one of the great inspirer of the young J.S. Bach. The recording will be accomplished in 2010 with the release of 30 CDs. Ton Koopman is President of the “International Dieterich Buxtehude Society”. Ton Koopman is very active as a guest conductor and he has collaborated with many prominent orchestras in Europe, USA and Japan. He has been Principal Conductor of the Netherland Radio Chamber Orchestra and has collaborated with the Royal Concertgebouw Amsterdam, DSO Berlin, Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, Orchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks in Munich, Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Cleveland Orchestra, Santa Cecilia in Rome, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie and Wiener Symphoniker. In the following season he will work on new programmes with the New York Philharmonic, DSO Berlin, Orchestra RAI in Turin, Stockholm Philharmonic, Tonhalle in Zurich. After the great success of his tour at the beginning of 2008, Ton Koopman has been nominated Artist in Residence at the Cleveland Orchestra for three consecutive years starting in 2011. Ton Koopman publishes regularly and for a number of years he has been engaged in editing the complete Händel Organ Concertos for Breitkopf & Härtel. Recently he has published Händel’s Messiah and Buxtehude‘s Das Jüngeste Gericht for Carus. Ton Koopman leads the class of harpsichord at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, is Professor at the University of Leiden and is a Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Music in London. Ton Koopman is artistic director of the French Festival “Itinéraire Baroque”.

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 the press for his "unique expressiveness, his pleasant timbre, his sensitivity for words as well as his convincing music-making" and for being an "excellent master of his Fach". "His interpretations of songs, cantatas and oratorios set standards." Klaus Mertens’ unique characteristic is that he is the only singer worldwide to have sung and recorded the entire vocal oeuvre of both JS Bach and Buxtehude. These recordings, directed by Ton Koopman, continue to enjoy the highest international recognition.
As "one of the leading Telemann singers of our time", Klaus Mertens was awarded the Telemann-Preis of the city of Magdeburg in 2016. "As the ideal conveyor of Bach’s cantatas and passion texts…" he received the renowned Bach-Medaille of the city of Leipzig in 2019.

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 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.