Nocturnalia

Mojca Jerman ​
Violin

Alex Mastichiadis
Harpsichord and organ

Pablo Tejedor-Gutiérrez
Cello and gamba

Who are we?

The Nocturnalia ensemble was formed by three members of the EEEmerging+ Ambronay Academy 2021 during a project focused on music from the 17th century. Our aim is to perform the music of the Early Baroque with Historically Informed criteria but also incorporated improvisatory elements, unknown repertoire and a fresh approach to performance. Due to COVID, the first concert had to be postponed until January 2023, when we organized a residency at the Music Hub Conservatory in Athens finished with a concert and a recording session.

This led to several concerts as part of the Fringe Scheme of both Utrecht Early Music Festival and Contratemps Festival and to be selected by a jury directed by William Christie as semi-finalists in the 2023 Loire International Early Music Competition. In 2023 we also organized an Slovenian tour around the anniversary of the botanical treatise Flora Carniolica, including a whole new programme around music and nature.

More recently, we performed modern premieres of forgotten pieces by Michele Stratico, and we have been lucky to be chosen as one of the ensembles of the Brighton Early Music Festival 2024 Live Scheme. In addition, we have future plans of performing again in Ljubljana and also in London at the Foundling Museum. Besides our individual music studies, we have been coached by Rachel Podger, Geoffroy Jourdain, Josephe Cottet or Martin Bauer.

What is Nocturnalia?

A young and fresh Early Music ensemble

Nocturnalia Ensemble is composed of three young performers (violin, cello/gamba and historical keyboards) who look to offer fresh concerts to their audiences, capable of awakening in the listeners the different emotions and feelings that 17th and 18th-century composers tried to express in their music. We believe that Early Music is tremendously contemporary, given the degree of freedom that offers to performers, and the amazing creativity that improvisation and ornamentation create.

Therefore, it is for us possible to assert that the music we play, even if old, is very attractive to modern audiences, since it is so original because many of its textures are uniquely generated during the concert (continuo realizations, gut strings sound, embellishments, etc). At the same time, we explore composers and pieces that sometimes have never even been played since their creation, we will never repeat performing the canonic list of omnipresent composers.