Founded in 1992 by erstwhile members of St Thomas’s Boys Choir in Leipzig, amarcord has since become one of the world’s leading vocal ensembles. amarcord’s hallmarks include a unique tone, breathtaking homogeneity, musical authenticity, and a good dose of charm and humour. amarcord performs a vast and highly diverse repertoire of music, from medieval plainsong to madrigals and Renaissance masses, to compositions and cycles of works of the European Romantic period and the 20th century, arrangements of a cappella folksongs collected from all over the world, all the way to soul and jazz charts.
Open to new currents in vocal music, the singers attach great importance to New Music. Works dedicated to the ensemble include those by Bernd Franke, Steffen Schleiermacher, Ivan Moody, James MacMillan, Sidney M. Boquiren, Siegfried Thiele and Dimitri Terzakis. Even though their concert programming is strongly focused on a cappella works, amarcord also regularly performs in concert with ensembles and artists such as the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, the Lautten Compagney, the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, the Leipzig String Quartet, concert pianist Ragna Schirmer, the bandoneon virtuoso Per Arne Glorvigen and the violinist Daniel Hope.
amarcord has won prizes at many international competitions, such as Tolosa in Spain, Tampere in Finland and Pohlheim in Germany, as well as the 1st Choir Olympiad in the Austrian city of Linz. In 2002, the ensemble won the German Music Competition, having joined the ranks of the BA KJK (the cream of young musicians singled out by the German Music Council for special support) two years beforehand. In 2004, amarcord became the first group of singers to be awarded the Ensemble Prize at the Mecklenburg-West Pomerania Festival. Attending master classes with the King’s Singers and the Hilliard Ensemble has given amarcord valuable stimulus over the years.
Alongside the Gewandhaus Orchestra and St Thomas’s Boys Choir, amarcord is now one of the leading representatives of Leipzig’s music scene in Germany and abroad. amarcord regularly
appears at important music festivals. Numerous concert tours have taken the singers to more than 50 countries and nearly every corner of the globe. In cooperation with the Goethe Institute,
the ensemble has made guest appearances in Australia, Southeast Asia, the Near East, Russia, and Central America.
Founded by amarcord in 1997 under the artistic direction of the group, the International Festival of Vocal Music “a cappella” (www.a-cappella-festival.de) has established itself as one of the most important festivals of its kind. Held in Leipzig in spring each year, premier vocal formations such as The Real Group, The King’s Singers, Take 6 and the Hilliard Ensemble can be heard at the
festival.
Numerous CDs including prize-winning recordings bear impressive testimony to the highly varied repertoire of amarcord. Latest released was the CD “tenebrae" with Sacred Medieval, Renaissance and Contemporary Vocal Music - including Works by Machaut, Gesualdo, Byrd and Boquiren. In 2016 the CD "SCHUBERT" together with pianist Eric Schneider (RK ap 10116) were published. Their anthology of beautiful folk songs from around the world – “Folks & Tales” won the Contemporary A Cappella Recording Award, or “a cappella Oscar,” which recognizes the best
recordings among a capella ensembles worldwide. Their recordings “Nun komm der Heiden Heiland” (“Now Come, Saviour of the Gentiles“), “Incessament” and “Hear the Voice” have also won the Contemporary A Cappella Recording Award. In 2013, their “Zu S. Thomas” release of two Gregorian Masses from the Thomas Gradual of St. Thomas’s Church Leipzig won the International Classical Music Award (ICMA), the most prestigious classical music award in Europe. Amarcord won a second ECHO Klassik Award in 2012 as Vocal Ensemble of the Year for “Das Lieben bringt groß’ Freud!” on the MDG label. Their 2009 release “Rastlose Liebe”
(“Restless Love”) received the ECHO Klassik Award, the Luxembourgian Supersonic Award and was nominated for the MIDEM Classical Award. In February 2010 amarcord featured in its first orchestral recording: the reconstructed version of Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. Mark Passion, performed together with Dominique Horwitz and the Kölner Akademie. Together with the Cappella Sagittariana Dresden, two CDs have been issued featuring the works of Heinrich Schütz and his contemporaries. Their recording of the motets by J. S. Bach with Lautten Compagney Berlin was released on the SONY/dhm label in 2012. The two ensembles joined forces again in 2014 for a recording of Claudio Monteverdi’s monumental Vespers of the Blessed Virgin on the CARUS label. In their first DVD production, “The Book of Madrigals” released with Accentus Music (a co- production with ZDF and ARTE, the five singers perform works by the most important Renaissance composers of vocal music at the beautiful patrician Villa Godi in Venice.