Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin & Justin Doyle
Biography Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin & Justin Doyle
Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin
celebrates its 40th anniversary in 2022. Founded in Berlin in 1982, the ensemble is now one of the world's leading chamber orchestras playing historically informed music.
For four decades, the orchestra has demonstrated its versatility with exciting concert projects, making significant contributions to the rediscovery of the music of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and Georg Philipp Telemann. Thoughtfully, the ensemble has also gradually expanded its core repertoire from the Baroque and Classical periods into the 19th century, most recently with its much-acclaimed cycle "Beethoven's Symphonies and their role models."
Whether in New York or Tokyo, London or Buenos Aires, Akamus is a much sought-after guest on the most important European and international concert stages.
Akamus is a central pillar in the cultural life of its home city of Berlin. For over 35 years, the orchestra has been playing a subscription series at the Konzerthaus Berlin. At the Berlin State Opera, the ensemble has regularly dedicated itself to Baroque opera since 1994. With its own concert series, Akamus has also been a regular guest at Munich's Prinzregententheater since 2012.
Akamus performs under the alternating direction of its two concertmasters, Bernhard Forck and Georg Kallweit, as well as selected conductors. The ensemble has a particularly close and long-standing artistic partnership with René Jacobs. In addition, Emmanuelle Haïm, Bernard Labadie, Paul Agnew, Diego Fasolis, Fabio Biondi, Rinaldo Alessandrini, and Christophe Rousset have recently conducted the orchestra.
Akamus also works regularly with internationally renowned soloists such as Isabelle Faust, Antoine Tamestit, Kit Armstrong, Alexander Melnikov, Anna Prohaska, Michael Volle, and Bejun Mehta. Together with the dance company Sasha Waltz & Guests, they created the internationally successful production of Henry Purcell's Dido & Aeneas, which has been widely performed from Berlin to Sydney. The most fruitful partnership with the RIAS Kammerchor Berlin deserves special mention: the collaboration, which has been equally formative for both ensembles, began 30 years ago. Akamus also maintains a close partnership with the Bavarian Radio Chorus.
The ensemble's recordings have won all the major recording awards, including the Grammy Award, Choc de l'année, and the Annual Prize of the German Record Critics. In 2006, the orchestra received the Telemann Prize of the City of Magdeburg, and in 2014, the Bach Medal of the City of Leipzig.
The RIAS Kammerchor Berlin
is one of the most renowned professional choirs in the world. Numerous awards and prizes document the choir’s high international reputation: The German Record Critics’ Award, the ECHO Klassik, the Gramophone Award, the Choc de l’annee, the Prix Caecilia, and the “Nachtigall” honorary prize from the Jury of the German Record Critics’ Award.
The multinational ensemble, made up of 34 professionally trained singers, is known for its meticulously prepared performances. As part of the RIAS Kammerchor Studio, four young singers are invited to work closely with the choir each season. lts repertoire ranges from historically informed interpretations of Renaissance and Baroque music to works from the Classical and Romantic eras, together with regularly given world premieres.
Justin Doyle
has been Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the choir since the 2017-18 season.
The recordings they have made together for harmonia mundi have been enthusiastically received by the listening audience and critics alike. They include the complete Liebeslieder waltzes by Brahms, and Handel’s Messiah, Coronation Anthems, and Dixit Dominus, along with a pairing of his Utrecht Te Deum with Bach’s Weihnachts-Magnificat – a collaboration with the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin. Summer of 2025 marks the release of the first of two recordings devoted to sacred works by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and his sister Fanny Hensel.
With up to 50 concerts per season on stages in Germany and around the world, the ensemble is one of the most important touring choirs in the country. Every other year, the RIAS Kammerchor Berlin and Deutscher Musikrat host the final concert of Deutscher Chordirigentenpreis, which concludes a multiannual funding programme for aspiring conductors. Other music education projects include mentorship for Berlin school choirs, musical salons, and audience workshops led by Justin Doyle.
Since being founded in 1948 as part of the “Rundfunk im amerikanischen Sektor” (Radio in the American sector), the choir has been guided and shaped by leading artists, including Günther Arndt, Uwe Gronostay, Marcus Creed, Daniel Reuss, and Hans-Christoph Rademann, who were its chief conductors. It regularly collaborates with renowned ensembles such as the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, and the Freiburger Barockorchester, along with conductors including Sir Simon Rattle, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Iván Fischer, and Rinaldo Alessandrini, as well as with René Jacobs, who leads the choir in their numerous recordings for harmonia mundi.
