Rie Kimura began to study baroque violin in Japan with Keiko Watanabe and Paul Hererra in 2002. In 2004 she moved to Amsterdam to study with Lucy van Dael at the Amsterdam conservatory. She studied ensemble playing with Raul Moncada (Mexico). She also took lessons with Sayuri Yamagata in The Netherlands. She has played solos in concerts with Lucy van Dael and plays and records regularly as a member of De Nederlandse Bachvereniging, Musica Amphion, Bach Collegium Japan, and Orchestra Libera Classica. In 2008 she won the top prize (2nd) in the Yamanashi early music competition (Japan). In 2009, together with Ensemble Diamanté, she won the 2nd prize in the Bruges international competition and also the audience prize in Van Wassenaer Early Music Competitions. In 2010 she won the top prize (2nd) and also the public prize in Premio Bonporti competition in Rovereto, Italy.
Robert Smith is a Yorkshire-born baroque cellist and viola da gambist. He studied baroque cello in Amsterdam with Wouter Möller, Jaap ter Linden and Viola da Hoog. He also studied Viola de Gamba with Mieneke van der Velden (Amsterdam) and Paolo Pandolfo (Basel). He was principal cellist for the European Union Baroque Orchestra in 2005/6 under the direction of, amongst others, Lars Ulrik Mortensen, Rachel Podger and Christophe Coin. Robert plays with Barok Opera Amsterdam (Purcell music theatre), Academia Montis Regalis (Italy) and Les Elements (French chamber cantatas) amongst others. His spare time is used learning Japanese and supporting a free music school in a refugee camp in the West Bank of Palestine.
Robert has performed several times in the prestigious Amsterdam Concertgebouw and has been broadcast in live performances on Dutch Radio 4 and BBC Radio 3. As part of Ensemble Diamanté he won second prize in the renowned Bruges Musica Antiqua Concours and the Audience Prize in the International Van Wassenaer Concours (Amsterdam). In 2010 he won the second prize in the International Baroque Soloist competition in Brunnenthal, Austria.
Nederlandse versie here downloaden.
Guillermo Brachetta began piano studies at an early age in his native Argentina, but immediately after discovering the voice of baroque he turned his devotion to the harpsichord.
Having arrived in The Netherlands in 1995, he studied at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague with Jacques Ogg and at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam with Menno van Delft, his true mentor.
Guillermo also followed classes with Gustav Leonhardt, Bob van Asperen, Christophe Rousset and Lucy van Dael amongst others.
He performs with Emmy Verhey, Amsterdam Bach Solisten, The New Dutch Academy, the Catherine the Great Baroque Orchestra (Saint Petersburg, Russia), Residentie Orkest, Orkest van het Oosten, Holland Symfonia and others.
Together with Menno van Delft he is founder of the "Collegium Wilhelm Friedemann Bach", devoted to the rediscovery of the work of the unjustly neglected Wilhelm Friedemann Bach.
Guillermo is very active as a music editor and researcher and works in close cooperation with Cambridge University Press and other international institutions, having edited numerous works from the
XVII and XVIII centuries for first time publication.
Nederlandse versie here downloaden.