John Harris Harbison is an American composer, known for his symphonies, operas, and large choral works.
Collegium Vocale Gent is a Belgian musical ensemble of vocalists and supporting instrumentalists, founded by Philippe Herreweghe. The group is dedicated to historically informed performance.
Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh darein, BWV 2 is a chorale cantata composed by Johann Sebastian Bach for the second Sunday after Trinity in 1724. First performed on 18 June in Leipzig, it is the second cantata of his chorale cantata cycle. The church cantata is based on Martin Luther's 1524 hymn "Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh darein", a paraphrase of Psalm 12.
David Thomas is an English classical bass singer, performing mostly in concert. He has performed internationally at notable concert halls and festivals.
Johann Sebastian Bach composed the church cantata Jauchzet Gott in allen LandenBWV 51, in Leipzig. The work is Bach's only church cantata scored for a solo soprano and trumpet. He composed it for general use, in other words not for a particular date in the church calendar, although he used it for the 15th Sunday after Trinity: the first known performance was on 17 September 1730 in Leipzig. The work may have been composed earlier, possibly for an occasion at the court of Christian, Duke of Saxe-Weissenfels, for whom Bach had composed the Hunting Cantata and the Shepherd Cantata.
Christoph Graupner was a German composer and harpsichordist of late Baroque music who was a contemporary of Johann Sebastian Bach, Georg Philipp Telemann and George Frideric Handel.
Bach Collegium Japan (BCJ) is composed of an orchestra and a chorus specializing in Baroque music, playing on period instruments. It was founded in 1990 by Masaaki Suzuki with the purpose of introducing Japanese audiences to European Baroque music. Suzuki still remains its music director. The ensemble has recorded all of Bach’s cantatas, a project that extended from 1995 to 2018 and accounts for over half of its discography.
Joshua Rifkin is an American conductor, keyboard player, and musicologist, currently a Professor of Music at Boston University. As a performer he has recorded music by composers from Antoine Busnois to Silvestre Revueltas, and as a scholar has published research on composers from the Renaissance to the 20th century. He is famed among classical musicians and aficionados for his increasingly influential theory that most of Bach's choral works were sung with only one singer per choral line. Rifkin argued: "So long as we define 'chorus' in the conventional modern sense, then Bach's chorus, with few exceptions, simply did not exist." He is best known by the general public, however, for having played a central role in the ragtime revival in the 1970s, with the three albums he recorded of Scott Joplin's works for Nonesuch Records.
Concentus Musicus Wien (CMW) is an Austrian baroque music ensemble based in Vienna. The CMW is recognized as a progenitor of the period-instrument performance movement.
La descente d'Orphée aux enfers H.488 is an incomplete chamber opera in two acts by the French composer Marc-Antoine Charpentier. It was probably composed in early 1686 and performed either in the apartments of the Dauphin that spring or at Fontainebleau in the autumn. Charpentier himself sang the title role, joined by musicians of Mademoiselle de Guise and members of the Dauphin’s little ensemble; it was Charpentier’s last appearance with this ensemble.
Matthew White is a Canadian countertenor.
Peter Kooij is a Dutch bass singer who specializes in baroque music.
Johann Sebastian Bach composed the church cantata Bereitet die Wege, bereitet die Bahn, BWV 132, in Weimar in 1715 for the fourth Sunday of Advent and led the first performance on 22 December 1715.
Dorothee Mields is a German soprano concert singer of Baroque and contemporary music.
La Petite Bande is a Belgium-based ensemble specialising in music of the Baroque and Classical era played on period instruments. They are particularly known for their recordings of works by Corelli, Rameau, Handel, Bach, Haydn, and Mozart.
Donald Young Sur was a Korean American composer and musicologist. Although he is best known for his large-scale oratorio, Slavery Documents, most of his works were composed for small chamber ensembles. Sur was born in Honolulu and moved with his family to Los Angeles after World War II. He studied at the University of California and Princeton before spending four years in Korea researching ancient Korean court music. After receiving his doctorate from Harvard in 1972, he settled in Boston, Massachusetts, where many of his works were premiered and where he taught at several local universities, including Harvard, MIT, and Tufts.
Der Herr denket an uns, BWV 196, is a cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach. The early church cantata, possibly for a wedding, is difficult to date, but is generally considered to be an early work on stylistic grounds. The text is a passage from Psalm 115, assuring of God's blessing, especially for children. Scholars have suggested the work may have been written for the wedding of Johann Lorenz Stauber, the minister in Dornheim who had married Bach and his first wife there in 1707, and Regina Wedemann, an aunt of Bach's wife, on 5 June 1708.
Hana Blažíková is a Czech soprano and harpist. She is focused on Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque music, appearing internationally. She has recorded as a member of the Bach Collegium Japan, among many others.
Non sa che sia dolore, BWV 209, is a secular cantata composed by Johann Sebastian Bach and first performed in Leipzig in 1747. With Amore Traditore, it is one of the composer's only two settings of a text in Italian.
Pamela Dellal is an American mezzo-soprano in opera and concert, a musicologist and academic teacher. She has performed classical music from the medieval Hildegard von Bingen to contemporary. She is on the faculty of the Boston Conservatory, Brandeis University, and the Longy School of Music of Bard College. She is known for having translated all texts that Johann Sebastian Bach set to music.
