ANTOINETTE LOHMANN (AMSTERDAM, 1969) studied violin, viola and historical violin at the Amsterdam Conservatory. Antoinette has been active in a variety of musical areas, including Argentinian tango, salon music, folk music and contemporary music. She has performed and recorded with many orchestras and ensembles over the years. Currently her repertoire extends from the early 17th to the 21st century, always performed from a historically informed perspective. She has a special interest in unusual instruments such as the viola d’amore, the tenor violin, the violino piccolo and the viola pomposa. She is also a keen performer of contemporary compositions for historical instruments. Her main focus is on reviving forgotten chamber music, with special emphasis on Dutch repertoire. She has recorded chamber music by Joseph Martin Kraus, Margarethe Danzi, Franz Danzi, Franz Krommer, Belle van Zuylen and Dutch and German music of the early baroque. Antoinette teaches historical violin and viola as a principal study at the HKU Utrecht Conservatorium and the Conservatorium van Amsterdam. She is also the principal teacher of the Historical Performance department in Utrecht. Antoinette recorded these works on a late 17th-century violin by Egidius Snoeck (Brussels), which is still in its original baroque set-up, using four pure gut strings.

FUROR MUSICUS was founded by Antoinette in 2008. The group has released several recordings: transcriptions of works by J.S. Bach, among them Antoinette’s reconstruction of a J.S. Bach viola concerto; the violin sonatas opus 1 & 2 by the Dutch baroque composer Jacob Nozeman; and the critically acclaimed Phantasia Musica album (2017), featuring previously unknown 17th-century repertoire. Phantasia Musica scored a 10 with distinction in the Dutch classical music magazine Luister, 5 stars in the Dutch daily de Volkskrant and an A in the Italian magazine Amadeus. The ensemble is primarily devoted to performing and recording little-known 17th- and 18th-century repertoire on period instruments and carrying out the necessary historical research. The performers wish to guard against simply going with the flow of traditions that have developed over the past decades within the historically informed performance movement. There is still so much fantastic repertoire that has been unjustly neglected and never performed, and they view it as an important challenge to immerse themselves in previously unheard repertoire and to avoid being influenced by other performances. The name Furor Musicus derives from the term Furor Poeticus, a Latin expression often used to refer to poetic inspiration in ancient Greek and Roman literature. The word ‘furor’ refers to a state of intense excitement, in some cases even bordering on madness. The term Furor Poeticus refers to the capacity to be inspired and inspire others. Poetic inspiration is often described as a state in which the poet is the passive and unconscious mouthpiece of a higher power, but in fact, there was an equal emphasis on craft and inspiration throughout antiquity. It was the same with music of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Harpsichordist Jörn Boysen was born in Lübeck, Germany, in 1976. Initially he studied at the Musikhochschule Lübeck and later at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague with Tini Mathot and Ton Koopman.
As a conductor, soloist or continuo player he works and plays regularly with ensembles and choirs in Germany, Spain, the Netherlands and France. He gives workshops for historical performance practice and basso continuo.
Since 2006 Boysen is director of the Hollands Vocaal Ensemble with which he successfully performed programs as the ‘Messe des Morts’ by Jean Gilles, music from the “Altbachisches Archiv” and a program with the Requiem by Mozart and the Libera me by Neukomm. He conducted a production at the O.T. Opera Rotterdam in 2005. In 2009 he will be musical director of the production of Molière’s/Charpentier’s ‘Le Malada Imaginaire’ at ‘De Utrechtse Spelen’.
As a composer Boysen wrote orchestral and vocal music and a string quartet. Currently he is composing the music for the poems by German painter and writer Rainer Erhard Teubert.