Juliane Laake · Ensemble Art d’Echo
Already hailed by the press as the “Grande Dame of the viola da gamba” (onlinemerker) and a “leading figure on the early music scene” (Deutschlandfunk Kultur), german gambist Juliane Laake has long since made a name for herself. She is regularly invited to perform as a soloist and with her ensemble Art d’Echo at the scene’s most prestigious festivals and concert series, including the Festival van Vlaanderen, the Musikfestspiele Potsdam Sanssouci, the Heinrich Schütz Music Festival, the International Bach Festival Stuttgart, the Thuringian Bach Weeks and the Erzgebirge Music Festival.
She has performed worldwide in the most prestigious concert halls of Utrecht, Copenhagen, Salzburg, Stockholm, Basel, Leipzig, Prague, Madrid, Berlin, Tel Aviv, Hamburg, Ghent, Zurich, Barcelona, Sydney, Lucerne and Buenos Aires. Juliane Laake maintains close artistic collaborations with leading early music ensembles such as the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin and the lautten compagney BERLIN, as well as with the vocal ensembles Ælbgut and AuditivVokal Dresden.
Together with her ensemble Art d’Echo, she has produced numerous highly acclaimed CD recordings that have received multiple awards (‘CD of the Year rbb kultur’, nominations for the German Record Critics’ Award, the OPUS Klassik and the International Classical Music Award ICMA). Many of the projects by Juliane Laake and the Art d’Echo ensemble have been supported by the Berlin Senate and various foundations. Juliane Laake is a prize-winner of the International Telemann Competition and was a scholarship holder of the German Music Council. She studied with Hille Perl at the University of the Arts Bremen and with Philippe Pierlot at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague, and lives with her family in Potsdam, near Berlin.
The Art D’Echo Ensemble was found in 2010 by the gambist Juliane Laake. Since that time she has been pursuing her own musical projects with this ensemble in varying instrumental combinations. The musicians chosen by her for this purpose, all of them specialists in their own fields, have been enriching her work with their considerable musical inspiration and their profound practical expertise. Central to this is the remarkably varied literature for viola da gamba, spotlighted by her ambitious programming. The ensemble’s success is documented in numerous CDs, broadcast recordings, and appearances in concerts and festivals. They have also been nominated for several prizes.