Adriaan de Koster

It was in 2002, somewhere near Hamburg, on my first choir tour with the Leuven University Choir. Singing with friends in a church we happened to go into, while just beforehand we’d been playing football on the green outside. I was struck then by such an incredible feeling. I didn’t know what sort of effect singing together could have, on us and on the listeners.

Yet there’d always been plenty of music at home. The Beatles, Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen on long car journeys, and classical when we were at home. We had a harpsichord and a piano, and my brothers and I explored these instruments. At music school, I learned piano and cello, which were fantastic instruments, but it only really clicked with singing – quite by coincidence – when I joined the student choir at university.

Singing became my great passion, and after a few years also my studies and my work. First mainly in ensembles, and later also more and more as a soloist. Mostly Renaissance and Baroque, with Bach and Monteverdi as the big favourites, and with the Bach Society as the ultimate place to experience this wonderful repertoire at the highest possible level. It’s a fantastic voyage of discovery through old and new melodies, with that magnificent instrument: the vocal-instrumental ensemble.