RIAS Kammerchor, Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin & René Jacobs
Biography RIAS Kammerchor, Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin & René Jacobs
The RIAS Chamber Choir Berlin
is one of the world's leading professional choirs. Numerous awards document its international reputation, including the German Record Critics' Prize, ECHO Klassik, Gramophone Award, Choc de l'année, Prix Caecilia and the "Nachtigall" honorary prize awarded by the jury of the German Record Critics' Prize.
34 professionally trained singers make up the multinational orchestra. The RIAS Kammerchor Berlin is renowned for its precise sound. The repertoire ranges from historically informed Renaissance or Baroque interpretations to new interpretations of works from the Classical and Romantic periods and regular world premieres.
Justin Doyle has been Principal Conductor and Artistic Director since the 2017-18 season. In autumn 2018, he made his debut in Japan with the RIAS Kammerchor. Three recordings featuring him with his choir have since been released - Britten's Hymn to Cecilia, Haydn's Missa Cellensis and Handel's Messiah - to rave reviews from audiences and critics. A recording of both of Brahms' love song cycles will follow in spring 2022. As part of the RIAS Kammerchor Studio, four academy students will also become part of the choir each season.
With up to 50 concerts per season on stages throughout Germany and the world, the RIAS Kammerchor is one of the most important touring choirs in the country. In its home city, it presents ten Berlin concerts, including the renowned New Year's Concert, the Forum Concerts in cooperation with the Verein der Freunde und Förderer (Association of Friends and Sponsors), in which unusual venues become concert stages, as well as joint programmes with sister ensembles such as the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin or the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. Every two years, together with the German Music Council, it organises the final concert of the German Choral Conductors' Prize, which comes at the end of a support programme lasting several years. In addition, the RIAS Kammerchor maintains school choir sponsorships with Berlin high schools as part of its education programme.
Leading artists such as Günther Arndt, Uwe Gronostay, Marcus Creed, Daniel Reuss and Hans-Christoph Rademann have shaped the choir since its founding in 1948 as a radio ensemble in the American sector. Regular collaborations exist with important ensembles such as the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and the Freiburger Barockorchester as well as conductors such as Sir Simon Rattle, René Jacobs, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Iván Fischer and Rinaldo Alessandrini.
The RIAS Kammerchor Berlin is an ensemble of the Rundfunk Orchester und Chöre gGmbH Berlin (ROC). Its shareholders are Deutschlandradio, the Federal Republic of Germany, the State of Berlin and the Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg.
Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin
Founded in Berlin in 1982, the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin (Akamus for short) is now one of the world's leading chamber orchestras playing historically informed music and can point to an unparalleled success story. Akamus is a regular and much sought-after guest on international concert stages. For over 30 years, the orchestra has had its own subscription series at the Konzerthaus Berlin, and since 1994 its musical signature has shaped the baroque repertoire at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden. The ensemble performs under the changing direction of its concertmasters Bernhard Forck, Georg Kallweit and Stephan Mai as well as selected conductors. The ensemble has a particularly close partnership with René Jacobs. Recent conductors have included Emmanuelle Haïm, Bernard Labadie, Paul Agnew, Diego Fasolis and Rinaldo Alessandrini. The orchestra's congenial cooperation with the RIAS Chamber Choir deserves special mention, as evidenced by numerous award-winning recordings. Akamus regularly works with internationally renowned soloists such as Isabelle Faust, Andreas Staier, Alexander Melnikov, Anna Prohaska, Werner Güra, Michael Volle and Bejun Mehta. Together with the dance company Sasha Waltz & Guests, successful productions such as Purcell's "Dido & Aeneas" or Dusapin's "Medea" have been created, establishing Akamus' international reputation as a creative and innovative ensemble. Well over one million recordings sold are an expression of the orchestra's international success.
René Jacobs
With more than two hundred and fifty recordings to his credit and an intensive schedule as singer, conductor, scholar, and teacher, René Jacobs has achieved an eminent position in the field of Baroque and Classical vocal music.
He received his early musical training as a choirboy at the cathedral of his native city of Ghent. Alongside his advanced studies of Classics at the University of Ghent, he continued to study singing. His encounters with Alfred Deller, the Kuijken brothers, and Gustav Leonhardt were to determine his orientation towards Baroque music and the countertenor repertory, in which he soon established his reputation. In 1977 he founded the ensemble Concerto Vocale with which he explored this repertory throughout Europe and in Japan. He then began to make a series of innovative recordings for harmonia mundi, all of which won awards from the international press.
His career as an operatic conductor began in 1983 with the production of Cesti’s L’Orontea at the Innsbruck Festival, of which he was director until 2009. His passion for Venetian opera, to which he constantly returns, has resulted in triumphs in two works by Cavalli, La Calisto (in a production by Herbert Wernicke) and Eliogabalo. His collaboration with the Berlin Staatsoper and the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels has led him to conduct Telemann’s Orpheus and Der geduldige Socrates, Graun’s Cleopatra e Cesare, Gassmann’s Opera seria, Keiser’s Croesus, Mozart’s Così fan tutte, and Haydn’s Orlando Paladino. He has also conducted regularly at the Aix-en-Provence Festival (since 1998), at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and Salle Pleyel in Paris, and in Vienna (Theater an der Wien). Vienna and Berlin now constitute his twin bases for opera productions.
Rene Jacobs has received many distinctions from music critics in Europe and the USA, where his recording of Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro won a Grammy Award (Best Opera 2005). Classica magazine voted him ‘Artist of the year 2009’ for his recordings of Telemann’s Brockes-Passion, Mozart’s Idomeneo, and Haydn’s Die Schöpfung. In 2010 his astonishing version of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte was released to enthusiastic acclaim (CD des Jahres in Opernwelt, Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik, Choc de l’année 2010 in Classica, BBC Music Magazine Award). His most recent releases were a new recording and a world premiere of an oratorio by Pergolesi, Septem verba a Christo in cruce followed by a St Matthew’s Passion of J.S Bach (ECHO-Preis 2014, Choc de l’année 2013 by the French magazine Classica).
René Jacobs holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Ghent.
