Diskantores & Niels Berentsen
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Biography Diskantores & Niels Berentsen
The ensemble Diskantores
(‘singers of polyphony’) was founded in 2015 by students, alumni and teachers of the Royal Conservatoire of the Hague (Netherlands). Diskantores proposes a fresh approach to fourteenth- and fifteenth-century polyphony, sung by male voices, in innovative, engaging performances. Its interpretations are informed by an in-depth understanding of the repertoire and its historical context, as well experiments with improvised polyphony and singing from original notation.
Diskantores has appeared at the Utrecht Early Music Festival (2015) and the festival Laus Polyphoniae (Antwerp, 2016) with presentations on vocal improvisation in the later middle ages. Its latest program, De Vroegste Nederlandse Polyfonie, has been performed in the series Musica Antica da Camera (The Hague, 2017) and at the Orgelpark (Amsterdam, 2017). Diskantores is directed by Niels Berentsen (tenor), members include Oscar Verhaar (countertenor), Andrew Hallock (countertenor), Benjamin Jago Larham (tenor), Korneel van Neste (countertenor/tenor), Santo Millitello (tenor), João Luís Paixão (bariton), and Jacques Meegens (organ).
Niels Berentsen
The ensemble Diskantores is directed by Niels Berentsen, singer, researcher, and music educator. Niels regularly appears as a tenor-soloist in cantatas and oratorios, and performs with vocal ensembles such as The Ascoli Ensemble (The Hague) and Capella Sancta Maria (Amsterdam). His opera debut, as Grimoaldo in a production of G.F. Händel’s Rodelinda regina de’ Longobardi, took place in 2015.
Niels has taught the theory and performance of medieval and Renaissance music, at the Royal Conservatoire (The Hague) since 2011. Since 2018 he teaches improvised counterpoint and research at the Haute École de Musique de Genève. As a researcher, Niels has investigated techniques of polyphonic improvisation in the 1300-1500 period. For this he received his doctorate from the University of Leiden in 2017. Guest-lessons and workshops on polyphonic improvisation have been given at the Russian Gnessin’s Academy of Music (Moscow), the Israel Conservatory of Music (Tel-Aviv), the Conservatory of Amsterdam, the Kodály Institute (Kecskemét), the House of Polyphony (Leuven), and the International School of Improvisation (Verona).
