Czech Mate

Putting the Czech in Czech Mate, Helena Zemanová first studied modern violin in the Czech Republic before becoming interested in early music and studying baroque violin with Odile Edouard at the prestigious Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse in Lyon.

She is currently Concertmaster of the renowned baroque orchestra Collegium 1704, based in Prague. She is also a frequent performer across southern Europe with groups such as Gli Incogniti and L’Onda Armonica. Her impressive discography includes recordings with Gli Angeli Genève, Ensemble 415, Les Cyclopes and many more.

Melbourne-born violinist Julia Fredersdorff studied baroque violin with Lucinda Moon at the Victorian College of the Arts, before travelling to the Netherlands to study with Enrico Gatti at The Royal Conservatorium in The Hague. Based in Paris for close to a decade, Julia freelanced with some of the finest European ensembles, such as Les Talens Lyriques, Les Folies Françoises, Le Concert d’Astrée, Le Parlement de Musique, Ensemble Matheus, Les Paladins, Il Complesso Barocco, New Dutch Academy, Ensemble Aurora and Bach Concentus.

Now resident again in Australia, Julia is the founder and Artistic Director of the Tasmanian baroque ensemble, Van Diemen’s Band. She is a founding member of the chamber ensemble Ironwood, the twice ARIA-nominated baroque trio Latitude 37, and founder and former Artistic Director of the annual Peninsula Summer Music Festival on the Mornington Peninsula. Julia has appeared in major arts festivals around Australia and New Zealand and has toured extensively across Europe, from Reykjavík to Wroclaw, Madeira to Venice.

Julia has participated in nearly forty international recordings for the labels BIS, Virgin Classics, Deutsche Grammophon, Accent, Accord, Naïve, Erato, Passacaille, Ambronay, ABC Classic, Vexations840 and Tall Poppies.

As a specialist in historical bassoon, Jane Gower performs extensively throughout Europe, the United States and Australia. She is very active in chamber music and as a soloist, appears with the finest early music orchestras.

Jane was performing with the Sydney Symphony, Australian Chamber Orchestra and the Australia Ensemble while still an undergraduate; after graduating from the Canberra School of Music she undertook post-graduate studies in historical bassoon at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague.

Now based in Denmark, Jane is principal bassoonist of Concerto Copenhagen, the Orchestra of the the Age of Enlightenment and Anima Eterna Brugge. For many years she was principal bassoon of Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s acclaimed English Baroque Soloists and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique. She returns regularly to Australia to perform with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Australian Brandenburg Orchestra and Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra (ARCO).

Jane is a prolific recording artist, including several albums recorded with Lars Ulrik Mortensen for ECM, and in a trio with Mortensen and Australian recorder player Genevieve Lacey for ABC Classics. Her recording of the infamously difficult bassoon parts of Zelenka’s six trio sonatas with the Prague-based Collegium 1704 was awarded a Diapason d’Or.

Lars Ulrik Mortensen is an internationally acclaimed harpsichordist and conductor, and a beacon of the early music movement.

Lars Ulrik studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Music and subsequently with Trevor Pinnock in London. From 1988 to 1990, he was a harpsichordist with London Baroque, and until 1993 with Collegium Musicum 90 under the direction of Simon Standage. Since 1999 he has been Artistic Director of Concerto Copenhagen, and regularly directs opera at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen. He was also the Artistic Director of the European Union Baroque Orchestra from 2004 to 2018.

Mortensen has taught all over the world, including at the Munich University of Music and Performing Arts, the Mozarteum in Salzburg, and the Juilliard School of Music in New York. His impressive discography includes recordings for EMI, harmonia mundi, Kontrapunkt and ECM, and his CD of Bach’s Goldberg Variations received the prestigious French award Diapason d’Or.

In 2007, he received the most prestigious award in the Danish music world, the Léonie Sonning Music Prize, and in 2008 he was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music in Stockholm.