Over the past 30 years, Combattimento Consort Amsterdam has established a strong national and international reputation. The ensemble is famous for the high quality and energy of its performances. That, together with its varied and often surprising and unfamiliar repertoire, for formations ranging from chamber ensemble to chamber orchestra, and from oratorios to operas, has made it one of the most successful Baroque ensembles in the world. The Combattimento Consort’s roughly 60 performances a year are distinguished by the originality of the ensemble’s presentation, led by one of the trend-setting conductors in Dutch musical life, Jan Willem de Vriend, who in November 2012 received the Radio 4 Prize.
The Combattimento Consort has gone on a number of tours in recent years to Germany, Spain, Central Europe, South America, Japan, Russia and the United States. It has recorded more than 35 CDs and DVDs – this year, its CD of Handel’s Concerto Grossi op. 6 will be released. The ensemble has worked with prominent soloists such as Barbara Bonney, Andreas Scholl and Sol Gabeta, Thomas Zehetmair and Sabine Meyer, as well as with the Netherlands Chamber Choir, the Nationale Reisopera and Cappella Amsterdam. The spearhead of its artistic direction is the performance of unfamiliar and as yet unpublished repertoire. Innumerable searches through libraries, churches and cloisters over the past 30 years have resulted in a notable collection of remarkable performances. In 2007, for example, Combattimento Consort Amsterdam presented Arminio, the only surviving opera of Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber. Over the years, it has developed a distinctive style of playing, which has even come to be known as the “Combattimento School” of performance. Recognizable and energetic, inventive, style-conscious and inspiring. The ensemble presents itself as a “consort”, but with the visibility of the “individual”. Jan Willem de Vriend leads the Combattimento Consort from the “first chair”, appearing as a conductor only in the larger productions (operas and oratorios). The instrumental soloists are in most cases members of the ensemble.

Marcel Reijans is one of the leading tenors in the Netherlands. Acclaimed for his lyrical roles in Mozart, Strauss and Wagner, Reijans has performed in major opera houses throughout Europe and America. He has been a guest at the opera houses of Berlin, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, Hamburg, Dresden, Baden-Baden, Düsseldorf, Geneva, New York City, Boston, Lyon, Philadelphia, Saint Louis, Marseille, Angers/Nantes, Cagliari, Montpellier, Aix-en-Provence, Antwerp, Palermo and Bologna.

Mr. Reijans commands a diverse and extensive repertoire of more than 70 operas including the roles of Don José in Carmen, Erik in Der fliegende Holländer, Narraboth in Salome, Matteo in Arabella, Max in Der Freischütz, Tamino in Die Zauberflöte, Grigory in Boris Godunov, Walther von der Vogelweide in Tannhäuser, Tom Rakewell in The Rake’s Progress, Loge in Das Rheingold, Fenton in Falstaff, Chevalier de la Force in Dialogues des Carmélites, Le Prince Philippe in Yvonne, Princesse de Bourgogne, Anatol in Vanessa, Camille in Die Lustige Witwe, Candide in Candide, Andres in Wozzeck, Kudrias in Kát’a Kabanova, Paris in King Priam, Tristan in Le vin herbé, Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni and Ferrando in Così fan tutte.

His concert engagements have included performances with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Staatskapelle Dresden, Radio Filharmonisch Orkest, Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Residentie Orkest, NDR Sinfonieorchester, Concerto Köln, Göteborgs Symfoniker and Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg.

He has been a guest at various festivals and in renowned concert series including the BBC Proms, Schwetzinger Festspiele and NTR ZaterdagMatinee in the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam as well as the festivals of Aix-en-Provence, Tanglewood, Montreux, Innsbruck and Brisbane. Mr. Reijans has worked with numerous conductors including Yves Abel, Daniel Barenboim, Bertrand de Billy, Frans Brüggen, Semyon Bychkov, Riccardo Chailly, Christoph Eschenbach, Peter Eötvös, Valery Gergiev, Hartmut Haenchen, Thomas Hengelbrock, René Jacobs, Philippe Jordan, Ton Koopman, Sir Simon Rattle, Seiji Ozawa, Edo de Waart and Jaap van Zweden.

On the concert stage Mr. Reijans performed in Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, Verdi’s Requiem, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, Mendelssohn’s Elias and Die erste Walpurgisnacht,Lizst’s Faust Symphony, Hohe Messe and the arias and role of the evangelist in St. John Passion and St. Matthew Passion (Bach), Messiah and La Resurrezione (Händel), Requiem, Krönungsmesse and Der Messias (Mozart), Die Schöpfung (Haydn), Petite Messe Solennelle (Rossini), L’Enfance du Christ (Berlioz), Messa di Gloria (Puccini), Te Deum (Bruckner), The Bells (Rachmaninov), Serenade for Tenor and Horn (Britten) and Child of our time (Tippett).

In addition to an extensive solo career, Marcel Reijans founded Dutch ensemble Frommermann, a group of five singers, pianist and guitarist that performs a wide variety of music ranging from Schubert and cabaret songs from the interbellum to modern popular songs. From 2005 – 2013 Mr. Reijans was the managing and artistic director of Frommermann, leading the ensemble become one of the most well-known Dutch chamber music groups that specialise in light and classical music.

In 2015, Reijans founded Taralli, a new ensemble with two tenors, two baritones and a pianist. Taralli performs famous opera repertoire in a theatrical setting.

Mr. Reijans is on the vocal faculty of Codarts Rotterdam and Prins Claus Conservatory in Groningen and has given masterclasses at the Royal Conservatory in the Hague. Since 2014 he also has a private vocal studio named “Studio Fritz”.

Jan Willem de Vriend, designated “a godsend from the Netherlands” by the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, is driven by the pioneering spirit of historically informed perfomance practice. As music director of the Combattimento Consort Amsterdam, which he founded in 1982, he specialised in repertoire of the 17th and 18th centuries, reviving a wealth of rarely heard works through historically informed performances on modern instruments, praised by Gramophone magazine for their “technical finesse and a lively feeling for characterization”.
An award-winner for his creative contribution to classical music, Jan Willem de Vriend has more than 50,000 followers on Spotify and is in demand as a conductor around the world, appearing regularly with such orchestras as the Royal Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Residentie Orkest Den Haag, Belgian National Orchestra, Tonhalle Zurich, Orchestre National de Lyon, Bergen Philharmonic, Warsaw Philharmonic, the symphony orchestras of Netherlands Radio and Hessischer Rundfunk (Frankfurt Radio Symphony), Melbourne Symphony, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony and Hong Kong Philharmonic. He is Principal Conductor Designate of the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, and Principal Guest Conductor of the City of Kyoto Symphony Orchestra, Principal Guest Conductor of the Stuttgart Philharmonic and Orchestre National de Lille, and former Principal Guest Conductor of the Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona i Nacional de Catalunya and the Brabant Orchestra.
For the Challenge Classics label, de Vriend and the Netherlands Symphony Orchestra have recorded the complete Mendelssohn symphonies and all Beethoven’s symphonies and concertos with, among others, pianist Hannes Minnaar and violinist Liza Ferschtman. De Vriend’s interpretation of the Symphony No 7 prompted Classic FM to admire “a bounding flair that does real justice to the composer’s capacity for joy”. A further landmark of his recorded catalogue is his complete recording of the Schubert symphonies with the Residentie Orkest Den Haag.
De Vriend’s collaborative spirit is equally evident in his work for the stage, notably with opera director Eva Buchmann and Combattimento Consort Amsterdam. In addition to works by Monteverdi, Haydn, Handel and Telemann, their productions in Europe and the USA have included staged versions of Bach’s ‘Hunting’ and ‘Coffee’ Cantatas at the Bachfest Leipzig, and operas by Mozart, Rossini, Verdi and Cherubini, among them Mozart’s Don Giovanni und Rossini’s La gazzetta, both toured in Switzerland. De Vriend has also conducted operatic productions in Amsterdam (with the Nederlandse Reisopera), Barcelona, Strasbourg, Lucerne, Schwetzingen and Bergen.