Arcangelo: extempore

Music for instruments by Bach and his contemporaries 

Performed by Arcangelo’s internationally-renowned chamber soloists:

Jonathan Cohen – Thomas Dunford – Sophie Gent – Jonathan Manson

Photo credit: Stefan Cohen

Arcangelo is one of the world’s leading ensembles, bringing together exceptional musicians who excel on both historical and modern instruments, brought together by founder and artistic director Jonathan Cohen. Its players believe that the collaboration required in chamber music, whether working in duos or as a chamber orchestra, is the highest expression of what it means to make music. Setting it apart from other ensembles, all performers are committed to this chamber ideal and as such Arcangelo attracts an outstanding calibre of performers who already have flourishing solo and chamber music careers. Their repertoire is principally from the early, baroque and classical periods, although there have been various successes with later repertoire and there are plans to develop in this direction in the future.

Jonathan Cohen
Photo: Marco borggreve

Jonathan Cohen has forged a remarkable career as a conductor, cellist and keyboardist. Well known for his passion and commitment to chamber music Jonathan is equally at home in such diverse activities as baroque opera and the classical symphonic repertoire. He is Artistic Director of Arcangelo, Music Director of Les Violons du Roy, Artistic Director of Tetbury Festival and Artistic Partner of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra.

During the 19-20 season he makes return visits to the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Budapest Festival Orchestra and Iceland Symphony Orchestra and debuts with the Handel and Haydn Society, Lucerne and Cincinnati Symphony Orchestras and the Scottish Ensemble. He tours the USA with Les Violons du Roy and continues his collaboration with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra.

Jonathan founded Arcangelo in 2010, who strive to perform high quality and specially created projects. He has toured with them to exceptional halls and festivals including Wigmore Hall London, Philharmonie Berlin, Kölner Philharmonie, Vienna Musikverein, Salzburg Festival and Carnegie Hall New York. They made their Proms debut at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse in 2016 and returned to the Proms in 2018 to present Theodora to a sold-out Royal Albert Hall. They repeat this performance at the Wiener Konzerthaus in January 2020 and their 10th anniversary celebrations also include a performance of Haydn’s Creation at the Barbican Centre.

Thomas Dunford discovered the lute at the age of nine, thanks to his first teacher Claire Antonini. He completed his studies in 2006 at the Conservatoire de Paris (CRR), when he obtained a unanimous 1st Prize with honors in the class of Charles-Edouard Fantin.

​Thomas Dunford is regularly in demand, playing a variety of early plucked string instruments with the ensembles Les Arts Florissants, Akadêmia, Amarillis, Les Ambassadeurs, Arcangelo, La Cappella Mediterranea, Capriccio Stravagante, Le Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles, La Chapelle Rhénane, Clematis, Collegium Vocale Gent, Le Concert Spirituel, Le Concert d’Astrée, A 2 Violes Esgales, The English Concert, l’Ensemble Baroque de Limoges, La Fenice, Les Folies Francaises, the Irish Baroque Orchestra, Marsyas, Les Musiciens du Louvre, Les Musiciens du Paradis, Les Musiciens de Saint Julien, Les Ombres, Pierre Robert, Pygmalion, La Sainte Folie Fantastique, Scherzi Musicali, La Serenissima, Les Siècles, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, La Symphonie du Marais…

​Thomas Dunford is attracted to a wide variety of music including jazz, and collaborates in chamber music projects with conductors and soloists Paul Agnew, Leonardo Garcia Alarcon, Nicola Benedetti, Keyvan Chemirani, William Christie, Jonathan Cohen, Christophe Coin, Iestyn Davies, Lea Desandre, Isabelle Faust, Bobby McFerrin, Philippe Herreweghe, Monica Huggett, Alexis Kosenko, Francois Lazarévitch, Anne-Sophie von Otter, Trevor Pinnock, Patricia Petibon, Sandrine Piau, Anna Prohaska, Hugo Reyne, Anna Reinhold, Jean Rondeau, Skip Sempé, Jean Tubéry…

Born in Perth, Western Australia, Sophie Gent took up the baroque violin during her undergraduate studies at the University of Western Australia, and continued her training with Ryo Terakado at the Royal Conservatoire The Hague, graduating with distinction in 2005. After several years living and working in The Netherlands, she moved to France where she now resides.

Sophie has had the honour of performing and recording with numerous chamber ensembles, among them Arcangelo, the Ricercar Consort, and Ensemble Masques, and with musicians such as Bertrand Cuiller, Kristian Bezuidenhout, and Jean Rondeau. She has also performed as the leader of several larger ensembles, notably Ensemble Pygmalion, Collegium Vocale Ghent, and Freiburger Barockorchester.  She enjoys teaching and was Professor of baroque violin at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam from 2011 to 2014. Since 2013 she has also taught at the Académie européenne de musique ancienne in Vannes, the Jeune Orchestre de l’Abbaye (JOA) Masters programme of the Abbaye aux Dames in Saintes, as baroque violin professor at the Pôle supérieur d’enseignement artistique Paris Boulogne-Billancourt, and in various master-classes.

Sophie plays a violin made by Jacob Stainer in 1676.

Phantasm Photo: Marco Borggreve

Jonathan Manson enjoys a busy and varied career as a performer on both cello and viola da gamba. Born into a musical family, he received his formative training at the International Cello Centre under the direction of Jane Cowan, later going on to study with Steven Doane and Christel Thielmann at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. A growing fascination for early music led him to Holland, where he studied viola da gamba with Wieland Kuijken at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague.

He was the principal cellist of the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, with whom he performed and recorded more than 150 Bach cantatas and, together with Yo-Yo Ma, Vivaldi’s Concerto for two cellos. Nowadays Jonathan devotes most of his time to chamber music, performing repertoire ranging from the Renaissance to the Romantic. He is a founding member of the viol consort Phantasm, which has toured worldwide and made more than twenty recordings; several of these have won major prizes, including Gramophone Awards in 1997, 2004 and 2017. Jonathan is also the cellist of the London Haydn Quartet, whose latest volume of Haydn’s complete quartets (op. 64) has just been released on the Hyperion label.

Jonathan frequently appears as a principal and continuo player with the Dunedin Consort, Arcangelo, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and other leading early music groups. Recent highlights have included recitals with Elizabeth Kenny, Carolyn Sampson, Iestyn Davies, Peter Whelan and Laurence Cummings.  As a concerto soloist he has appeared at the Wigmore Hall and the South Bank Centre, as well as further afield, in Hong Kong, Potsdam, the Haydn Festspiele in Eisenstadt and New York’s Carnegie Hall.

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Advance tickets for this evening’s performance cost £19.50

On the door on the night they will cost £24.00