Louise Eekelaar - voice, Rie Kosaka - voice, harps
Louise Eekelaar studied with Alison Wells and Timothy Travers-Brown at the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, where she obtained her LTCL Diploma with distinction, and holds a Masters in Early Music from the University of York.
She has sung in many small ensembles as a consort singer and soloist, including the Ebor Singers, and sang with the Schola Pietatis Antonio Vivaldi during its European tour with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and its BBC4 and Radio 3 documentary of Vivaldi’s Gloria. Louise also sang the music of Hildegard von Bingen in recordings and a European tour with Sinfonye. In the past year she has sung in masterclasses given by Dame Emma Kirkby, Robert Hollingworth, Harry Bicket and Jessica Cash.
As well as singing in Ensemble Tramontana, she currently sings with Cappella Nova and the trio Virtuosa, and was recently a choral scholar at St Martin-in-the-Fields.
Rie Kosaka is a vocalist and harpist specialising in early music. She enjoys both singing and playing the harp and has a passion for Medieval and Renaissance music.
Rie is currently in her first year of Early Harp Masters under Dr. Andrew Lawrence-King at Guildhall School of Music and Drama receiving scholarships from Guildhall Trust and the Nomura Foundation. She was originally inspired to perform after studying Gregorian chants under Prof. Dr. Godehard Joppich and Veronika Chikako Hashimoto. She studied historical performance and singing at Trinity College of Music, where she won the Ella Kidney Prize for early music and received LTCL Diploma with distinction.
In 2009, she came to London and started playing the medieval harp which brought her success. As a prize winner, she gave a recital at Greenwich Early Music Festival in that year and now performs at many places in the UK. Rie is also a member of Ensemble Tramontana which is a vocal and instrumental group performing the music of medieval and renaissance Europe.
Her recent performances held at places including Greenwich International Early Music Festival, Utrecht Early music festival the Netherlands, Southbank centre, Handel House, St Martin-in-the-fields, St James’s church Piccadilly, the Foundling museum London, Jesus college chapel, Cambridge and Blackheath hall.
Julie Dean gained her BMus degree in 1998 at Goldsmith College, London. In 2006, after a successful management career in retail and the licensed trade, she returned to music attending Trinity College of Music for her MMus studying the recorder with Rebecca Miles and Viola da Gamba with Alison Crum. Julie is also interested in playing middle eastern percussion instruments. For her personal project she is researching the effects of hearing loss in musicians.
As a recorder player her performances have included the Greenwich International Early Music Festival, St Martin-in-the-Fields, Southbank Centre, The Exmoor Singers of London and historical dance group The Renaissance Footnotes.
Julie
works actively teaching adult amateur recorder players including
directing three groups and conducting for the Society of Recorder
Players. Recently she has taught at a workshop in France for recorder players from across Europe. She is also one of a few teachers in the UK qualified to
teach the recorder to early years children using the Suzuki method.
Eszter Komáromi moved to the UK in 2007 from Hungary, where she studied biology and computer programming and worked as a software developer.
Her passion, however, has always been for music. She started the cello at the age of seven and played in various orchestras and chamber music formations until she started learning the viol in 2004, taking private lessons from S?ndor Sz?szv?rosi. She attended courses in Hungary (Bukk Summer Academy) and abroad.
Eszter is now keen to start a career in music. After obtaining her LTCL diploma in July 2010, she is in the first year of her Master of Music studies at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, supported by the Ferrabosco Scholarship. She is working on projects at Trinity Laban including collaborations with the departments of Composition and Jazz; a study of the acoustics of playing outdoors and in other non-traditional venues; and the development of software to assist students in choosing historically and structurally appropriate ornamentation. Eszter recently gave a recital of mostly unaccompanied French baroque solo viol music; she is an active member of Trinity Laban's early music ensembles and has performed with various groups and individuals such as the Lovekyn consort, the Exmoor Singers of London, and Philip Thorby.
Esha Neogy is a postgraduate student at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, She has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Music from the University of Hawaii and is a member of the Hawaii-based group Europa Early Music Consort, with which she has performed in numerous concerts and school programmes. Esha now also performs in Trinity Laban Early Music Department concerts; serves as a deputy teacher of the adult viol class at Morley College; and has participated in community concerts in London, theatre performances in Oxford, and British Library functions.
In addition, she is a writer, editor, deafness services provider, mediator, and conference director. She directed the Biennial Conference on Literature and Hawaii’s Children from 1998 to 2004 and organised the international Pan-Pacific Gamba Gathering in 2007, held in Honolulu on the theme of the viola da gamba as a ‘world’ instrument and including sessions on crossover and new music as well as the viol’s core history and repertoire.