Jos van Veldhoven was artistic director of the Netherlands Bach Society for more than 35 years. Under his leadership, an impressive CD series was created, as well as concert tours in the Netherlands, Europe, the United States, and Japan. Music was not limited to Bach and his contemporaries, but also often included ‘new’ repertoire from the 17th and 18th centuries.
In his programming van Veldhoven knows how to connect tradition and adventure. He is the initiator of All of Bach, an ongoing unprecedented project in which the Netherlands Bach Society performs, records and publishes all of Bach’s works online. More than 20 million followers worldwide now enjoy the widely acclaimed recordings on YouTube.
Van Veldhoven often attracts attention with performances of ‘new’ repertoire within the early music genre. There have been some remarkable performances of oratorios by Telemann and Graun, vespers by Gastoldi, reconstructions of Bach’s St Mark Passion and the Köthener Trauer-Music and many lesser known seventeenth-century oratorios and dialogues. He has also conducted a large number of modern premieres of Baroque operas by such composers as Mattheson, Keiser, Bononcini, Legrenzi, Conti, and Scarlatti. Van Veldhoven is in great demand as a guest conductor, and has conducted the Dutch Chamber Choir, Netherlands Radio Choir, Flemish Radio Choir, Beethoven Orchester Bonn, Robert Schumann Philharmonic, Essen Philharmonic Orchestra, Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, and many of the Dutch symphony orchestras. Between 2001 and 2010, van Veldhoven worked with director Dietrich Hilsdorf on a cycle of staged Handel oratorios in the opera houses of Bonn and Essen.
Van Veldhoven has been associated with the Conservatorium van Amsterdam and the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague as a teacher of choral conducting for more than 30 years.
In 2007, Queen Beatrix of The Netherlands made him a Knight in the Order of the Dutch Lion for his ground-breaking work in early music.
Destrubé enjoys a rich and varied musical life as soloist, chamber musician, teacher, and leader of orchestras, and divides his time between playing modern instruments, and performing baroque and classical music on period instruments.
He plays with the Smithsonian Institution-based Axelrod String Quartet, the Microcosmos Quartet in Vancouver, and is a member of the Turning Point Ensemble, specializing in 20th century music and new music. He has appeared in chamber music performances on the Early Music Vancouver series and summer festival and is artistic director of the annual Pacific Baroque Festival (Victoria).
A founding member of Tafelmusik (Toronto), he went on to perform with leading European ensembles, including Anima Eterna (Belgium), the Academy of Ancient Music and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.
As a concertmaster he has played under Simon Rattle, Roger Norrington, Kent Nagano, Helmuth Rilling, Christopher Hogwood, Philippe Herreweghe, Gustav Leonhardt and Frans Brüggen. As co-concertmaster of Brüggen’s renowned Orchestra of the 18th Century for over two decades, he toured the major concert halls and festivals of Europe, North America, Asia and Australia, as well as leading numerous performances and recordings.
A much-loved teacher, he has been a visiting artist/faculty at the Paris, Moscow and Utrecht Conservatoires, Indiana University, Case Western University, Australian National University, Sydney Conservatorium, San Francisco Conservatory, DePaul University, the MacPhail School, the Banff Centre and the University of Victoria, and has presented children’s concerts at the Cité de la Musique (Paris).
His teachers included two eminent string quartet leaders of the past century, Sandor Végh (Végh Quartet), and Norbert Brainin (Amadeus Quartet).
Augusta McKay Lodge is a historically informed violinist, globally established at a young age as leader, chamber musician, and soloist. McKay Lodge has appeared as soloist with Voices of Music, Les Musiciens de Saint-Julien, The American Classical Orchestra, Juilliard415, Jupiter Ensemble, Les Arts Florissants, and more. McKay Lodge regularly performs as concertmaster with Les Arts Florissants, Les Musiciens de Saint-Julien, La Chapelle Harmonique, and others. She has appeared as guest concertmaster for Opera Fuoco, The American Classical Orchestra and the Irish Baroque Orchestra, and has guest directed the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra Chamber Players as a substitute for Richard Egarr. McKay Lodge’s solo discography includes Beyond Bach and Vivaldi (Naxos), Corelli’s Band (Naxos), and a disc with her sister (violist) Georgina McKay Lodge, J.G. Graun: Chamber Music from the Court of Frederick the Great (Brilliant Classics). McKay Lodge performs on a Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume (1867) and a baroque-copy Jason Viseltear (2014).
Katherine Kyme, baroque violin and viola, has been both concertmaster and principal viola of Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra. She performs regularly on both instruments with Agave Baroque, the Cantata Collective and Voices of Music. Her summer travels include festivals in Paris, New York, Norfolk, Ct., the Teton Music Festival, the Santa Fe, New Mexico Chamber Music Festival, the San Luis Obispo Mozart Festival, the Seattle Baroque Festival and the Whidbey Island Music Festival. As a member of two string quartets, String Circle and the New Esterházy Quartet, she has twice performed all 68 Haydn Quartets as well as all 23 Mozart Quartets. She, with her husband, William Skeen, founded the San Francisco Early Music Society’s Classical Workshop which coaches professionals and amateurs in Classical and Romantic repertoire on period instruments.
William Skeen serves as Principal Cellist with Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Voices of Music, and the Seattle Bach Festival. He is a founding member of the New Esterházy Quartet, Cantata Collective, and La Monica, and taught baroque cello and viola da gamba at the University of Southern California for two decades. He has appeared as continuo cellist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Master Chorale, San Diego Opera, and has been highlighted as viola da gamba soloist multiple times with the Dallas Symphony, Los Angeles Master Chorale, Carmel Bach Festival, Oregon Bach Festival, American Bach Soloists, and the Orquesta Nacional de México. Previously, William served as Principal Cellist with Musica Angelica, and American Bach Soloists, and guest Principal Cellist with the Portland and Seattle Baroque Orchestras. He has performed and recorded with Musica Pacifica, Smithsonian Chamber Players, and Philharmonia Chamber Players. Mr. Skeen has served on the faculty of the American Bach Soloists Academy, the Berwick Academy at the Oregon Bach Festival, the San Francisco Early Music Society’s Baroque Workshop, and co-founded the SFEMS Classical Workshop.
Bart Naessens’ musical activities span many different fields. On the one hand, he is a highly respected and esteemed continuo player (partly due to his years of studying “early music” and its correct historical performance practice). On the other hand, he is seen both as a soloist and in chamber music on concert stages at home and abroad, performing a wide variety of repertoires, ranging from early polyphony to creations by contemporary composers. This has allowed him the privilege, even at a young age, of performing with and being invited by leading musicians and renowned ensembles and orchestras, such as Ensemble Explorations, Zefiro Torna, Il Gardellino, Collegium Vocale Ghent, the Flemish Radio Choir and Orchestra, the Netherlands Bach Society, Currende (consort), the Choir and Orchestra of the Royal Mint Theatre, La Hispanoflamenca, and others.
Since 1999, Bart has been the titular organist at Saint-Gilles Church in Bruges. His teaching activities take place at the academy in Blankenberge and at the Lemmens Institute’s art school in Leuven, where he teaches organ and harpsichord. In addition, since September 2012, he has been a harpsichordist-accompanist for the French-speaking section of the renowned Royal Brussels Conservatory and for the early music department of the Lemmens Institute.
Bart is increasingly focusing on conducting and is regularly invited as a guest conductor by various choirs and orchestras. For example, he is the rehearsal coach and conductor for several productions at the Flemish Radio Choir. He is also the artistic director of the Roeselare Chamber Choir, with which he primarily explores the lesser-known and lesser-performed chamber choir repertoire in a unique, deeply musically inspired way.
Debra Nagy, oboe, is recognized as “a baroque oboist of consummate taste and expressivity” (Plain Dealer). As Artistic Director of Les Délices, she has acquired a reputation for creating concert experiences that “can’t help but getting one listening and thinking in fresh ways”(San Francisco Classical Voice), and she plays principal oboe with the Handel & Haydn Society, Apollo’s Fire, Boston Early Music Festival, and other ensembles around the country. Recent creative initiatives with Les Délices have included a three-year commissioning project expanding the repertoire of mythological cantatas, Vivaldi’s Seasons reimagined with wind instruments, multimedia productions of Machaut’s medieval masterpiece Remede de Fortune, an acclaimed CD combining jazz and French Baroque airs called Songs without Words, and The White Cat, a pastiche Baroque opera with puppetry and projections based on Marie Catherine d’Aulnoy’s 1690s feminist fairytale. In addition to recording over 40 CDs with repertoire ranging from 1300-1800, Debra was awarded a 2022 Cleveland Arts Prize (Mid-Career Artist) and honored with the 2022 Laurette Goldberg Prize from Early Music America for her work on Les Délices’ acclaimed web series and podcast SalonEra. When not rehearsing, performing, or dreaming up new projects, Debra can be found cooking up a storm in her kitchen or commuting by bike from her home in Cleveland’s historic Ohio City neighborhood.