Norwegian treble Aksel Rykkvin (b. 2003) recorded his debut album with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment at just twelve years old. Aksel! Arias by Bach, Handel & Mozart (2016) was awarded a DIAPASON ‘d'Or découverte’, and BBC Music Magazine named him as one of the ‘six best child prodigies’ in classical music. Aksel was nominated as ‘Newcomer of the year’ at the Spellemannprisen awards in Norway in 2017. Aksel has performed at numerous concerts and festivals all over Norway, including Fjord Classics and Oslo Chamber Music Festival. In 2017, he opened the Stockholm Early Music Festival and performed at the Klassiek op het Amstelveld in Amsterdam. He has performed several times on radio or tv in Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands and the UK, including Scandinavia’s biggest talkshow, ‘Skavlan’, and BBC Radio 3 ‘In tune’. Aksel has sung for the Norwegian Royal family on several occasions, including at the 80 years anniversary party of the King and Queen with a host of European royalty present. He has worked with the Oslo Philharmonic, the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra, Arve Tellefsen, Henning Kraggerud, Håvard Gimse, Christian Ihle Hadland, Lars Anders Tomter, Rolf Lislevand, Sigmund Groven and many more of the most prominent Norwegian orchestras, classical musicians and conductors. Aksel is something of an international phenomenon in social media, with millions of video views on YouTube and Facebook.
At 13 years old Aksel won the Norwegian Music Competition for Youth, which is open to classical musicians and singers up to age 22.
Aksel is already a merited soloist at the Norwegian National Opera. The Financial Times described him as “freakishly good” in his first main stage role as ‘the Boy’ in Rolf Wallin’s Elysium. He dazzled critics further as ‘Yniold’ in Debussy’s Pélleas et Mélisande, a performance that ResMusica called ‘unsurpassable’. In September 2017 Aksel made his international opera debut at Opéra Comique in Paris, as ‘Anthony’ in Katie Mitchell and Raphaël Pichon’s Miranda.
Aksel still sings in Oslo Cathedral Boys’ Choir where he started out receiving training as a five-year-old from voice teacher Helene Haarr. When he started singing in the Children’s Chorus of the Norwegian National Opera at the age of ten, Aksel began singing studies with his present main voice teacher Marianne Lewis both in the opera and in the classical music talent class at Majorstuen school in Oslo. Aksel’s voice changed in the autumn of 2017 and he now continues to sing as a baritone, training to pursue a career as a classical and opera singer.

The MIN Ensemble is one of Norway’s few professional chamber ensembles, and is widely considered to be one of the foremost ensembles in Norway. It is based in the county of Nordland but tours throughout the country as well as abroad.

As a large chamber ensemble (string quintet, wind quintet and piano), MIN Ensemble performs music that is only rarely heard by today’s concert audiences. The ensemble also tours with various arrangements and programmes. Its repertoire is dynamic and broad, ranging from early through to contemporary music.

Since its foundation in 1992, the ensemble has been enthusiastically received by audiences and critics both at home and abroad.

Mark Bennett won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music, London, where he studied with Michael Laird. Whilst there he was awarded the Royal College Brass prize and also became interested in the natural trumpet and baroque performance practice. Since then he has been involved in many different types of music making, including playing principal trumpet with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Between 1990 and 2000, Mark was a professor at the Royal Collage of Music, teaching both modern and baroque trumpet. He has performed and toured extensively with many period instrument orchestras and ensembles, including the English Concert, London Brass and Baroque Brass of London, as well as the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and The English Baroque Soloists. He has worked with some of the world's leading conductors, including Esa Pekka Salonen, Claus Tennstedt, Franz Bruggen, Sir Roger Norrington, William Christie, Ton Koopman Iona Brown, Christopher Hogwood, Sir Simon Rattle, Philippe Herreweghe, and Sir John Eliot Gardiner Mark played lead trumpet in the West-End production of Cats for the last 2 years of its London run, and has also played on over one hundred feature films, including Shakespeare in Love and Stargate.
Mark has made many solo recordings on both the modern and the baroque trumpets. These include concertos by Haydn, Fasch, Vivaldi and Telemann, all with Trevor Pinnock and The English Concert for Deutsche Gramophone archive. He has recorded 2 solo recordings with the Purcell Quartet: A Purcell collection and Biber’s Sonatae Tam Aris Quam Audis Sevientes. Mark has recorded Bach's second Brandenburg Concerto seven times: the first time when with Sir Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields he was just 21, and subsequently with enembles including the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Hanover Band and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. For ten years Mark was a member of London Brass, where he recorded many solo brass pieces. Including works by Marini, Gabrieli and Purcell.
In the last ten years Mark has built a fruitful relationship with Norway, working with the Norwegian Baroque Orchestra, the Oslo Baroque Orchestra and as soloist with Terje Tønnesen and the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra. He has also appeared in the Oslo Chamber Music Festival playing Bach's second Brandenburg Concerto. Conducting has also become a more important part of his musical life, with invidations to lead Orchestras and wind bands in Norway such as NRK Radio Orchestra, MiN Ensemble, Den Norske Blaseensemblet and Kongelige Norske Marinenes Musikkorps amongst others.