Channa Malkin, Mike Fentross, Kano Imada
Biographie Channa Malkin, Mike Fentross, Kano Imada
Channa Malkin
While growing up in a family of classical musicians, soprano Channa Malkin explored creative outlets like painting and writing, alongside playing the flute and singing in choirs. Her passion for opera ignited as a teenager, leading to her debut at 16 as Barbarina in Le Nozze di Figaro with the Dutch National Opera.
Channa Malkin is known for her compelling musical personality and unbridled creativity. She was recently praised by Opera Today for “her pure and smooth voice, but full of feeling” and by La Opinión de Málaga for “her balance between vocal technique and precise musical phrasing and an unquestionable artistic talent.” She excels in a broad repertoire, from Mozart to Italian Baroque opera and Sephardic chamber music.
Channa’s most recent highlights include her title role debut in Händel’s Acis and Galatea with the Joven Orquesta Barroca Andalucía in Málaga, as well as a Vivaldi and Händel aria programme with the same orchestra. She made her recital debut at the Royal Concertgebouw with a semi-staged programme around the various identities of womanhood, inspired by 17th-century Italian composer Barbara Strozzi and Russian 20th-century poet Anna Akhmatova. Part of this recital was recently released as an EP on digital streaming platforms titled Channa Malkin Live at Concertgebouw. In the main hall of the Royal Concertgebouw, Channa performed as the first soprano in Mozart’s C Minor Mass as well as in an opera gala concert. With Ensemble Odyssee, she debuted at the Utrecht Early Music Festival in a programme around Anna Magdalena Bach, including some of the most beautiful Bach cantatas.
Other performances have brought Channa to Madrid, Göttingen, Istanbul, Ankara, Tata (Hungary), Lomza (Poland), and more, presenting programmes ranging from Zarzuela and Rossini arias with orchestra to Spanish and Sephardic folk songs with guitarist Izhar Elias, to intimate 17th-century songs with the orbist Mike Fentross and baroque ensemble La Sfera Armoniosa.
La Sfera Armoniosa
founded in 1992, is a Dutch Baroque ensemble and orchestra specialized in the performance of music from the seventeenth and eighteenth century. Artistic director and conductor is Mike Fentross. In addition to the music of famous composers such as Monteverdi, Haendel and Vivaldi, the ensemble undertakes research into the manuscripts and printed works of the European libraries in order to provide a rich spectrum of music from lesser known composers. The English music magazine Gramophone wrote about their first cd: “How soon will we hear the enchanting La Sfera Armoniosa again, and what fresh buried treasure will they unearth?” La Sfera Armoniosa is known and praised for it’s lively and colourful sound and for its groundbreaking programmes. They created in 2004 a Schoenberg/ Monteverdi programme that they performed with great success in the Utrecht Early Music Festival and they performed modern world premiers from three almost forgotten opera’s: La Rosinda, l’Ipermestra and Granida. In 2012 the Concertgebouw asked La Sfera to design and perform a special program, the Amsterdam musical life before the concerthall was build, for their 125th anniversary.
La Sfera Armoniosa performed in main festivals and concert halls such as: Festival van Vlaanderen, Festival d’Ambronay, Festival Oude Muziek Utrecht, Music Center Vredenburg, Musikfestspiele Potsdam Sanssouci, Monteverdi festival Cremona, Festival de Musica Portico de Zamora, Festival Musica Antiqua Bruges, and the Concertgebouw of Amsterdam.
About their performance of the opera La Rosinda by Francesco Cavalli in Musikfestspiele Potsdam Sanssouci the press wrote: "This evening, the orchestra has proven that it is amongst the leading baroque orchestras. I will not soon forget the nuances that came from the orchestra pit. That was great art. Nothing more and nothing less."
