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= La Sfera Armoniosa = La Sfera Armoniosa is a leading baroque ensemble and orchestra founded in 1992 by viola da gamba player Paulina van Laarhoven and lutist Mike Fentross. Named after the harmony of spheres the ensemble focuses on performing music from the 17th and 18th centuries. La Sfera Armoniosa is based in the city of Alkmaar, The Netherlands, itself an important city in the Dutch Golden Age.

Repertoire
The repertoire of La Sfera Armoniosa is broad, but most of it consists of music from the baroque era. Besides works of famous composers of this era such as Monteverdi, Händel en Pergolesi, the ensemble performs lesser-known music, distilled from old music prints and manuscripts after extensive research.

La Sfera's second CD, Senhora del Mundo (2000), was nominated for an Edison Award. Since then, La Sfera has recorded and cooperated on numerous albums, received with great enthusiasm by the press

Dutch Masters
La Sfera is currently working on the series Dutch Master, music by forgotten Dutch composers from the 17th and 18th centuries. The music of a.o. Willem de Fesch, Pieter Hellendaal and Unico Baron van Wassenaer will be presented to the public on national and international concert stages, radio, television and recordings in the coming years.

Opera Premieres
In 2003, the ensemble's lutist and artistic director Mike Fentross unearthed two early seventeenth-century operas by Francesco Cavalli from the cellars of the Marciana library in Venice. In 2006, La Sfera Armoniosa performed the modern world premiere of Francesco Cavalli's opera l'Ipermestra under Fentross' direction in an anniversary production of the Holland Festival Early Music Utrecht. In 2008, also under his direction, they performed the modern world premiere of Cavalli's opera La Rosinda.

Contemporary
La Sfera Armoniosa celebrated the jubilee of the Great or St. Lawrence church in Alkmaar in 2018 with a choir of more than 100 singers and Dutch contemporary composer Merlijn Twaalfhoven, performing a program with music from 1518 in combination with new music by Twaalfhoven. Earlier, in 2004, La Sfera made a surprising combination of Pierrot Lunaire by Arnold Schoenberg with the Combattimento by Monteverdi. Composer Boudewijn Tarenskeen composed the piece 'Mi' for La Sfera, inspired by music by Couperin.

In 2020-2022, artistic director Mike Fentross and jazz/world musician Maarten Ornstein created the project 'Covid files in concert', a program with singers from different cultures, especially from the countries that were hit hardest by the pandemic, such as China, Italy and England. The repertoire is based on traditional songs arranged by Ornstein and Fentross.

For the season 2022-2023 a full length choreography is developed with the upcoming Zero Dance Company which combines contemporary urban dance with the music of early baroque composer and music theorist Michael Praetorius.

Musicians
The ensemble/orchestra consists of a core of eight instrumentalists: Paulina van Laarhoven (viola da gamba), Lidewij van der Voort (violin), Elise van der Wel (violin), Esther van der Eijk (viola), Octavie Dostaler Lalande (cello), Siebe Henstra (harpsichord), Emma Huijsser (baroque harp and recorder) and artistic leader Mike Fentross (lute and vihuela). Depending on the works to be performed, the instrumentation can be varied and supplemented by instrumentalists, vocal soloists and choirs.

La Sfera Armoniosa regular cooperates in productions with other leading soloists and music ensembles such as singers Andreas Scholl, Johannette Zomer, Claron McFadden, Marcel Beekman, Nora Fischer and Opera2Day, the Nederlandse Reisopera, Dutch Chamber Choir.