An orchestra is a large instrumental ensemble typical of classical music, which combines instruments from different families. There are typically four main sections of instruments:
Trevor David Pinnock is a British harpsichordist and conductor.
Hendrik "Henk" Bouman is a Dutch harpsichordist, fortepianist, conductor and composer of music written in the baroque and classical idioms of the 17th and 18th century.
René Jacobs is a Belgian musician. He came to fame as a countertenor, but later in his career he became known as a conductor of baroque and classical opera.
Alberto Evaristo Ginastera was an Argentine composer of classical music. He is considered to be one of the most important 20th-century classical composers of the Americas.
Marin Marais was a French composer and viol player. He studied composition with Jean-Baptiste Lully, often conducting his operas, and with master of the bass viol Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe for six months. In 1676 he was hired as a musician to the royal court of Versailles and was successful there, being appointed in 1679 as ordinaire de la chambre du roy pour la viole, a title he kept until 1725.
A Baroque orchestra is an ensemble for mixed instruments that existed during the Baroque era of Western Classical music, commonly identified as 1600–1750. Baroque orchestras are typically much smaller, in terms of the number of performers, than their Romantic-era counterparts. Baroque orchestras originated in France where Jean-Baptiste Lully added the newly re-designed hautbois (oboe) and transverse flutes to his orchestra, Les Vingt-quatre Violons du Roi. As well as violins and woodwinds, baroque orchestras often contained basso continuo instruments such as the theorbo, the lute, the harpsichord and the pipe organ.
John Holloway is a British baroque violinist and conductor, currently based in Dresden, Germany. He is a pioneer of the early music movement.
A harpsichordist is a person who plays the harpsichord. Harpsichordists may play as soloists, as accompanists, as chamber musicians, or as members of an orchestra, or some combination of these roles. Solo harpsichordists may play unaccompanied sonatas for harpsichord or concertos accompanied by orchestra. Accompanist harpsichordists might accompany singers or instrumentalists, either playing works written for a voice and harpsichord or an orchestral reduction of the orchestra parts. Chamber musician harpsichordists could play in small groups of instrumentalists, such as a quartet or quintet. Baroque-style orchestras and opera pit orchestras typically have a harpsichordist to play the chords in the basso continuo part.
Philippe Gaubert was a French musician who was a distinguished performer on the flute, a respected conductor and a composer, primarily for the flute.
Christophe Rousset is a French harpsichordist and conductor, who specializes in the performance of Baroque music on period instruments. He is also a musicologist, particularly of opera and European music of the 17th and 18th centuries and is the founder of the French music ensemble Les Talens Lyriques.
Sigiswald Kuijken is a Belgian violinist, violist, and conductor known for playing on period and original instruments.
Barthold Kuijken is a Belgian flautist and recorder player, known for playing baroque music on historical instruments and particularly known for pioneering this manner of performance with his brothers, cellist and viol player Wieland Kuijken and violinist Sigiswald Kuijken, and the harpsichordist Gustav Leonhardt.
Gabriela Lena Frank is an American pianist and composer of contemporary classical music.
Bruce Haynes was an American and Canadian oboist, recorder player, musicologist and specialist in historical performance practice.
La Petite Bande is a Belgium-based ensemble specialising in music of the Baroque and Classical eras played on period instruments. They are particularly known for their recordings of works by Corelli, Rameau, Handel, Bach, Haydn, and Mozart.
Sunhae Im is a South Korean soprano. She has been described as a bright and versatile lyric soprano with lightness and coloratura. She first gained her reputation in the field of early music and now performs a wide range of classical and non-classical music.
Collegium Aureum was a chamber orchestra founded in Cologne, Germany, in 1962, which later focused on historically informed performance. Playing typically without conductor, they recorded for three decades, and performed concerts on international tours.
Claire Guimond is a Canadian flute player, founding member and former Artistic Director of Arion Baroque Orchestra.
Arion Baroque Orchestra, founded in 1981, is a Canadian baroque orchestra based in Montreal, Quebec, specializing in music of the 18th century performed on period instruments.
