Les Muffatti & Clint van der Linde
Biography Les Muffatti & Clint van der Linde
Clint van der Linde
Born in South Africa, Clint van der Linde started singing at the Drakensberg Boys’ Choir School aged ten. He gained the Queen Mother Scholarship for a four year B-Mus Degree at the RCM, London, where he completed his Post-Graduate studies, and in 1998 won the first prize in the Kathleen Ferrier Society Bursary for Young Singers.
Clint’s musical passport to the UK was thanks to the Eton Choral courses. In 1996 after his first Eton Choral Course, he was invited to join The Rodolfus Choir with which he did several tours including the States. Soon after, he was offered an International scholarship to attend Eton College for one year.
At the RCM, Clint van der Linde’s repertoire included Oberon A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the title roles in Flavio, Lotario and Ottone and Judas Brockes Passion. He has repeated the role of Oberon at the Royal Danish Opera and his operatic repertoire has further included Fernando Don Chischiotte in Sierra Morena with Musikwerkstatt Wien, Dardanus Amadigi with Der Lautten Compageney, Berlin, Narciso Agrippina with the Combattimento Consort (a performance now available on DVD) and The Guardian of the Threshold Die Frau ohne Schatten at La Monnaie. He made his debut at the 2009 Edinburgh International Festival singing the title role in Rinaldo with Bach Collegium Japan under the direction of Masaaki Suzuki.
Current engagements include the title roles in Flavio and Tolomeo for English Touring Opera, Andronico Tamerlano at the Göttingen Festival, the St John Passion with Polyphony and the Academy of Ancient Music, an Australian tour of Messiah with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and the Queensland Orchestra conducted by Stephen Layton and Messiah with the Bach Collegium in Japan.
Les Muffatti
was founded in 1996 by a group of young Brussels musicians out of a desire to equip themselves professionally for the world of orchestral baroque music. They sought above all else to give primacy to the pleasure of making music, together with an intensive exploration of the musical material itself and paying scrupulous attention to every detail of its performance.
After ten years under the baton of Peter Van Heyghen, the musicians assumed joint responsibility for the orchestra’s artistic direction in 2014; the musical direction for various projects has since been entrusted to guest musicians, soloists, conductors and Konzertmeisters. The ensemble is committed to establishing a fine balance between the great works of the established repertoire and lesser known or newly discovered compositions.
The ensemble’s name is a reference to Georg Muffat (1653-1704), a cosmopolitan composer whose works are essential source material for the history of early orchestral music. Muffat was also one of the first musicians to document the principal characteristics that differentiated the French from the Italian style in detail. The ensemble’s debut recording was devoted to his compositions.
Les Muffatti’s discography so far comprises eight recordings, all of which have met with universal acclaim.
The recording of Reinhard Keiser’s Brockes-Passion with Vox Luminis received Belgium’s three top honours: Klara’s recording of the year, a classical Octave, and the Caecilia prize from the Belgian musical press. Their latest recording, Johann Sebastian Bach – Concertos for Organ and Strings, is devoted to reconstructions of concertos and sinfonias by Johann Sebastian Bach with Bart Jacobs as soloist. This album continues to garner praise from both the general and musical press internationally, including the Diapason d’Or (France), Luister (The Netherlands), Toccata (Germany) and the Klara Award for Best Classical CD of the Year.
