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Dan Laurin

Dan Laurin certainly ranks among the greatest recorder players active anywhere in the world today. Laurin’s formidable technique (he is especially admired for his ability to produce a wide range of tone colors and dynamics) is matched by a distinctive interpretive style, combining thoughtful musical structure with highly wrought ornamentation and a sometimes wild sense of fantasy. His facility at improvisation evokes jazz greats like Charlie Parker, while honoring the aesthetics of 17thand 18th-century music. He has been a prolific recording artist and performer, covering the recorder’s historical repertory, from the major sonatas and concertos of Handel, Vivaldi, and Telemann (including two recently-discovered Telemann sonatinas) to contemporary music, both 20th-century classics of recorder literature and newly commissioned works, among them a half-dozen concertos. Special mention should be made of his 9-CD set of the completeDer Fluyten Lust-hof, Jacob van Eyck’s monumental, mid 17th-century collection, which remains the largest work in European history ever written for a wind instrument. Laurin’s much-praised recording was itself a landmark and a unique accomplishment. Laurin also had a long and fruitful collaboration with the late, legendary Australian instrument maker Frederick Morgan, to replicate historical recorders of various craftsmen from different eras. Among these was a special instrument designed to perform Der Fluyten Lust-hof. A member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music, he has been honored with many awards for his recordings and performances, including a GRAMMY, the Society of Swedish Composers’ prize for the best interpretation of contemporary Swedish music, the Litteris et Artibus medal from the King of Sweden and the “Interpreter Prise 2011” from the Royal Swedish Academy of Music. Laurin is also an active teacher, holding professorships at The Carl Nielsen Academy of Music, Odense; The Conservatory of Music in Gothenburg, Sweden; and the Royal Conservatory of Music in Copenhagen. In more recent years, he was appointed to positions at Stockholm’s Royal College of Music and at Trinity College in London. He researches and lectures on many areas of interpretation, music aesthetics, recorder acoustics, sound techniques, and performance issues. Laurin has inspired and trained some of the leading young recorder virtuosi in Europe and beyond. As a young man he reinvented the recorder as a vehicle of the highest artistic expression, and his playing continues to delight, challenge and enthrall audiences and fellow-musicians across the world.

Anna Paradiso

Anna Paradiso has been recently described by the critics as an 'absolute gem of a harpsichordist' (USA), with a 'fantastic rubato' (Spain) and 'great bravura' (UK). She has given concerts in Europe (Scandinavia, England, Germany, France, Italy, Slovenia) USA, Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong. She plays also clavichord, fortepiano and pianoforte. She has studied harpsichord with Gordon Murray, Christophe Rousset and Enrico Baiano and she has researched on her own on original sources on fingerings and thorough bass. As a soloist and as continuo player Anna Paradiso has appeared, with some of the leading ensembles and orchestras of Sweden and Scandinavia, as well as with Philarmonia Moment Musical (Taipei), Hong Kong Sinfonietta, Birmingham Conservatory Orchestra, and others. With her husband, the recorder virtuoso Dan Laurin, she has formed a duo that tours internationally and records for BIS. Together with Henrik Frendin (viola) and Mats Olofsson (cello) they both play in the ensemble Paradiso Musicale, whose acclaimed début recording – featuring music by Telemann and by J. S. and C. P. E. Bach – was chosen as Record of the Month by BBC Music Magazine. A successful tour in Hong Kong in July 2015, has seen her performing as soloist and as continuo-player with the recorder player Stefan Temmingh and HK Sinfonietta. Anna Paradiso has also performed with musicians such as Hidemi Suzuki, Nils-Erik Sparf and, together with various symphony orchestras, with Lisa Batiashvili, François Leleux, Lara St John, Jaime Martin. In addition, she commissions new works, for instance from the Italian composer Vito Palumbo, whose works she has performed, as soloist, with the ensemble Norrbotten NEO and will record with Gävle Symphony Orchestra for BIS in 2016. Several Swedish composers have written for Anna and also for her duo with Dan Laurin. For BIS, Anna has recorded all keyboard sonatas by J.H. Roman (with harpsichord and clavichord). She has also recorded Roman’s flute sonatas, Vivaldi recorder concertos, a disc with French baroque music, Bach’s harpsichord concerto BWV 1057, and more. As a soloist for BIS she is also going to record a new solo-CD with Swedish music. Anna Paradiso has taught at the conservatories of Bolzano and Avellino, at Trinity College in London, at the Birmingham Conservatoire, at Grieg Academy in Bergen and at international courses in Europe, Japan and Taiwan. She also gives seminars and workshops around the world on the connections between classical rhetorics and baroque music. Ms Paradiso is Ph.D doctor in Latin and ancient Greek, and, in the past, has taught Latin and classical literature at Oxford University and the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.