Gli Angeli Genève & Stephan MacLeod
Biographie Gli Angeli Genève & Stephan MacLeod
Stephan MacLeod
Geneva-born Stephan MacLeod is a singer and conductor. He now conducts between 40 and 50 concerts a year worldwide, including an increasing number of appearances as guest conductor with “modern” orchestras. He also happily pursues his career as a singer and is a vocal teacher at the Haute Ecole de Musique de Lausanne (HEMU).
After studying the violin and the piano, Stephan MacLeod began singing. He first received his vocal training at the Geneva Conservatory, then with Kurt Moll at the Musikhochschule in Cologne and finally with Gary Magby at the Haute Ecole de Musique in Lausanne. His career began while he was still a student in Germany thanks to a fruitful collaboration with Reinhard Goebel and Musica Antiqua Köln. That experience led him to the oratorio repertoire. Stephan MacLeod has since been singing regularly in the world’s most prominent venues under conductors such as Philippe Herreweghe, Jordi Savall, Frieder Bernius, Franz Brüggen, Masaaki Suzuki, Michel Corboz, Gustav Leonhardt, Christophe Coin, Konrad Junghänel, Hans-Christoph Rademann, Sigiswald Kuijken, Vaclav Luks, Philippe Pierlot, Helmut Rilling, Rudolf Lutz, Paul Van Nevel and Jos Van Immerseel, as well as Daniel Harding and Jesus Lopez Cobos.
As a Lied and melody lover, Stephan MacLeod gives numerous recitals. He has also appeared on opera stages, notably at La Monnaie in Brussel, La Fenice in Venice, and in opera houses in Geneva, Toulouse, Nîmes, Bordeaux, Cologne, Potsdam, Freiburg, Gerona, etc. Alongside his singing career, he has also been conducting regularly since 2005 and is the founder of Gli Angeli Genève, an ensemble that has gained significant international recognition in recent years.
Since 2013, Stephan MacLeod is a vocal teacher at the Haute Ecole de Musique de Lausanne. He divides his time between family, teaching, singing commitments, his ensemble and conducting – particularly Bach’s music. His discography includes over 100 CDs, many of which have been awarded.
Gli Angeli Genève
was founded in 2005 by Stephan MacLeod. This ensemble of variable size plays on period instruments (or copies thereof) and comprises musicians who pursue a career in baroque music but are not active in this field only: they do not solely play early music. Their eclecticism guarantees the vitality of their enthusiasm. It is also a driving force behind their curiosity.
From the very beginning of its musical adventure – solely focused for several years on the concert performance of the complete Bach Cantatas, with three concerts per season in Geneva – Gli Angeli Genève has been a meeting place for some of the most famous singers and instrumentalists on the international Baroque scene and young graduates of the Basel, Lyon, Lausanne and Geneva music schools.
The ensemble’s first two recordings, released in 2009 and 2010, won critical acclaim and international recognition. Gli Angeli Genève now gives over ten concerts each season in Geneva. These include the complete Bach Cantatas and a series of annual concerts at the Victoria Hall, as well as performances within the ensemble’s own Haydn-Mozart Festival and a season of chamber music concerts from September 2022 onwards. Gli Angeli is also much-demanded in Switzerland and abroad for performances of music by Bach, Tallis, Josquin, Schein, Schütz, Johann Christoph Bach, Weckmann, Buxtehude, Rosenmüller, Haydn, Mozart and others. In recent seasons, Gli Angeli Genève has been in residence at the Utrecht Festival and the Thüringer Bachwochen and has also given concerts in Basel, Zurich, Lucerne, Barcelona, Nürnberg, Bremen, Stuttgart, Brussels, Milan, Wroclaw, Paris, Ottawa, Vancouver and The Hague. It is a regular guest at the Saintes and Utrecht festivals, the Musikfest in Bremen or the Bach Festival in Vancouver. The ensemble made its debut at the Grand Théâtre de Genève in 2017 and the KKL Luzern in 2019.
Gli Angeli Genève’s first recording for Claves, Sacred Music of the 17th Century in Wroclaw, won the 2019 ICMA Award for the best recording of the year of baroque vocal music. In addition, Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. Matthew Passion received enthusiastic acclaim from audiences and critics, both in Switzerland and worldwide. Gli Angeli Genève›s recordings also include Bach›s Mass in B minor, nominated in 2022 for an ICMA Award, and Antoine Reicha’s rarely performed Symphonies Concertantes, with soloists Christophe Coin, Davit Melkonyan, Chouchane Siranossian and Alexis Kossenko.
