Choir, Orchestra, and Soloists
Keren Dalzell (Soprano), Maartje Sevenster (Alto),
Robert Macfarlane (Tenor), Andrew Fysh (Bass)
Orchestra led by Leanne Bear
Directed by Andrew Koll
Sopranos
Fiona Bender
Keren Dalzell
Ali Hughes
Gabriel Pender
Brooke Shelley
Altos
Natalie Cooke
Anne Marie Dalseg
Olivia Gossip
Vanessa Hooley
Jaki Kane
Maartje Sevenster
Tenors
Frank den Hartog
James Porteous
Tristan Struve
Richard Walker
Basses
Rowan Grigg
Jonathan Lee
Oliver Raymond
Luke Willard
Violins
Leanne Bear
Lauren Davis
Michelle Higgs
Alys Rayner
Matthew Witney
Viola
Ross Mitchell
Iska Sampson
Viola da Gamba
Jennifer Eriksson
Cathy Upex
Violoncello
Clara Teniswood
Olivia Thorne
Double Bass
David Flynn
Baroque Oboes
Aaron Reichelt
Andrew Angus
Baroque Flute
Jennifer Brian
Baroque Bassoon
John Myatt
Recorders
Robyn Mellor
Olivia Gossip
Cornetto
John Foster
Organ Continuo
Anthony Smith
ANDREW KOLL
Musical Director, Conductor
Andrew Koll is a Performance Teaching Fellow at the School of Music, ANU in Canberra Australia. He is a specialist in aural training, harmony and counterpoint, the science of just intonation, and the works of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Andrew first formed the CANBERRA BACH ENSEMBLE in 1999. He is eagerly anticipating the CBE's return to public performance in September 2016....
LEANNE BEAR
Leader of the Orchestra
Composer and violinist Leanne Bear (BMUS, Qld) travelled around Europe with violin and suitcase, improvising and busking, and learning from acclaimed pedagogues Simon Fischer and David Takeno, having won the Gertrude Langer prize in Brisbane; and given broadcasts and touring for Qld Arts Council with her Piano Trio ‘Icarus’....
KEREN DALZELL
Soprano
A graduate of the Australian National University's School of Music in Classical Voice (2012), Keren has recently returned from Austria, where she studied under master teacher Barbara Daniels (Metropolitan Opera, New York). In 2014, Keren participated in the prestigious Tyrolean Opera Program. Last year, Keren featured as Katie Nana and understudied the roles of Miss Andrews and the Bird Woman in Free-Rain Theatre Company's Disney's Mary Poppins and the role of Musetta in Canberra Canberra Opera's La Boheme. She has also featured in the roles of Cis in Albert Herring (2012), Spring in Dido and Aeneas (2010), and Female Owl in the premiere of the Australian opera Grimm and the Blue Crowned Owl. Keren is recognised as a principle soloist and recitalist around the Canberra region. discovered serious singing with teacher Susan Ellis when living in Canberra in the late 1990s.
MAARTJE SEVENSTER
Alto
Maartje Sevenster discovered serious singing with teacher Susan Ellis when living in Canberra in the late 1990s. Since then, she pursued singing at a high level in the Netherlands, studying part-time with Roberta Alexander, Frans Huyts and Connie de Jongh and participating in master classes with the likes of Evelyn Tubb, Kelvin Grout, Carolyn Watkinsson, Lucienne Bouwman and Richard Jackson. While obtaining a BMus, she sang in professional choirs with renowned conductors such as Yakov Kreizberg, Roy Goodman, Jaap van Zweden, Marc Soustrot and Reinbert de Leeuw. Opera roles include Third Lady in The Magic Flute (Mozart) and La Badessa in Suor Angelica (Puccini).
Recently, Maartje was alto soloist in Copland's In the beginning (“narrated with considerable power by mezzo-soprano Maartje Sevenster” CityNews), Janacek's Dairy of one who vanished, J.S.Bach's Easter Oratorio and Magnificat, J.C.Bach's Lamento, Pergolesi's Stabat Mater and Vivaldi's Nisi Dominus, in performances in the Canberra region. She performed the premieres of David Cassat's Die Hand, for mezzo-soprano, viola, cello, flute and clarinet, and Judith Clingan's In this Fateful Hour in December 2013, and was part of the community oratorio Passion for Peace by Canberra composer Glenda Cloughley. As one of the narrators, “the crystal-clear articulation of Sevenster progressed the narrative elements” (CityNews). In 2016, she sang with the Song Company in Rossini's Petite Messe Solenelle, conducted by Roland Peelman.
Maartje founded the new ensemble Adhoc Baroque with Greta Claringbould and Peter Young. She is a member of Coro Canberra and works with coaches Louise Page and Dianna Nixon. She conducts a small community choir in the village of Gundaroo. Next to performing, Maartje has an ongoing interest in the acoustics of the vocal tract. The active control of resonances and the role of so-called formant theory in vocal training were the central topics of her bachelor thesis. She participated in the Estill Voice Training System level one and two courses in 2015. (Photo © Lindi Heap)
ROBERT MACFARLANE
Tenor
Robert Macfarlane studied at the Elder Conservatorium in Adelaide and the Hochschule für Musik, Leipzig ‘Felix Mendelssohn-Bartoldy’ with Prof. Dr. Jeanette Favaro-Reuter, where he studied as recipient of the prestigious Thomas Elder Overseas Scholarship. He undertook extensive study of the Baroque repertoire with Tenor Howard Crook and has also studied and performed with world-renowned accompanist Malcolm Martineau. Robert Macfarlane was the winner of the Adelaide Critic’s Circle award for best individual performance in 2012 (Bach- St. John Passion), a finalist in the Lortzing Competition in Germany in 2013, and winner of the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic Aria competition in 2009.
This year Robert is making his debut with Opera de Lyon performing Tybalt in Boris Blacher’s Roméo et Juliette, and with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra in the role of Pong in Turandot, and he will also perform Israel in Egypt for the Halberstädter Domfestspiele.
Robert made his European Opera Debut in the virtuosic role of Ircano in Hasse’s Semiramide in Graz and Leipzig in 2014, for which he was highly acclaimed by the Austrian critics. On the opera stage, he has also sung Monostatos (The Magic Flute) for West Australian Opera; Orfeo (Peri’s Euridice) for Woodend Winter Arts Festival; the title role in Rameau's Pygmalion for the Peninsula Festival; Beppe (Pagliacci) and 3rd Jew (Salome) for State Opera of South Australia; Acis (Acis and Galatea) in Malaysia and Singapore; the roles of Echo and Pastore (and understudying the title role) in L'Orfeo with the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra for Brisbane Festival and in Sydney and Melbourne; and he has also performed with Opera Queensland, Pinchgut Opera, Lyric Opera of Melbourne and Co-Opera.
Robert is known internationally for his performances of Bach, in particular the Evangelist of the St. John and St. Matthew Passions, and was the 2008 and 2009 Bach Scholar in the St. Johns Bach Cantata program in Melbourne. He made his debut in Leipzig’s Thomaskirche in 2013 as the tenor soloist in Bach’s Mass in B Minor, with the Gewandhaus Orchestra and Thomanerchor under the direction of Georg Christoph Biller, returning the following year to perform Wär Gott nicht bei uns diese Zeit. Other acclaimed concert performances include soloist in semi-staged performances of St. Matthew Passion for Opera Queensland; Britten St Nicolas with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra; Mozart Great Mass in C minor at St George's Cathedral, Perth; Handel's Messiah and Solomon; Monteverdi’s Vespers at the Melbourne Recital Centre and the Adelaide Festival; Britten's Serenade and Les Illuminations; recitals of Schubert's Die Schöne Müllerin, Winterreise and Schwanengesang and Schumann's Dichterliebe and Liederkreis with pianist Leigh Harrold, Wolf’s Italienisches Liederbuch with Anthony Legge, and for ArtSong Canberra, Artsong NSW and The Firm in Adelaide.
ANDREW FYSH
Bass
Originally from Hobart, where he began his singing career forty years ago as a boy chorister at St David’s Cathedral, Andrew has considerable experience as both chorister and soloist throughout Australia. In 2004-06, he sang with the Choir of the London Oratory, England’s pre-eminent Catholic church choir. On return to Australia in 2007, he joined the Choir of St James’ Church, Sydney, with whom he still performs occasionally. Last year he joined the choir's European concert tour, including a week as choir-in-residence at Westminster Abbey.
Andrew’s particular interest lies in the music of the Renaissance and Baroque eras, nurtured through fourteen years as a permanent member of Melbourne’s acclaimed Ensemble Gombert under the direction of John O’Donnell. He has rejoined the ensemble for its four overseas concert tours, most recently to Germany and neighbouring countries in 2015. In Canberra, Andrew is a founding member of the Clarion vocal quartet with Tobias Cole, and sings with Coro. Coro's program of Renaissance polyphony, 'Music by Numbers', which Andrew devised and co-directed, was named by the Canberra Times as one of the top five concerts of 2015.
Since 1992, Andrew has appeared many times as a guest artist with the Song Company, including three CD recordings — among which the 1996 world-premiere recording of Heinrich Schütz's Der Schwanengesang received Soundscapes magazine’s Editor's Choice award.
Andrew's solo engagements have included Bach's Cantata 130 and Mozart's Requiem with The Song Company and Wallfisch Band (2014 Canberra International Music Festival), Bach's St John Passion (St Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney), Mozart's Requiem (2014 Festival of Voices, Hobart), and the latter two works again at St James’ Church, Sydney, in its 2014 concert series. Andrew performed various roles in the Canberra Choral Society's semi-staged productions of Handel's Alexander Balus (2014) and Theodora (2015), and was bass soloist in both Coro's and Canberra Choral Society's acclaimed sellout performances of Messiah in 2015.
This is Andrew’s third concert as bass soloist with the Canberra Bach Ensemble. As a further contribution to his late-blooming quest to conquer all of Bach’s cantatas, Andrew also performs with the newly formed Bach Akademie Australia, directed by Madeleine Easton, with whom he recorded Christ lag in Todes Banden (Cantata No.4) at the ABC Centre Ultimo in October last year.