Voces Suaves, which performs Renaissance and Baroque music with solo voices, is a vocal ensemble based in Basel. Taking into account the insights of historical performance practice, the ensemble strives for captivating rhetoric combined with a warm and full overall sound that makes the music come alive with emotion. By virtue of the intensive collaboration, a great familiarity within the musical work has evolved.

The ensemble, founded in 2012 by Tobias Wicky, is made up of a core of eight professional singers of whom most have a connection with the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. After the ensemble had been shaped over several years by Francesco Saverio Pedrini, it has worked without a musical director since 2016. Consequently, the creative will of each individual member is indispensable for the attainment of the artistic result. The formation varies depending on the program. Instrumentalists are incorporated when necessary.

The repertoire contains a broad selection of Italian madrigals, works of the Early German Baroque, and larger-scaled Italian oratorios and Masses. In planning the programs, care is taken to include works by forgotten composers, such as Lodovico Agostini or Giovanni Croce, alongside those of well-known masters like Monteverdi or Schütz.

Important performances have taken Voces Suaves to prestigious festivals throughout Europe, including the Festival d’Ambronay, the Festival de Saintes, the Freunde Alter Musik Basel, the Monteverdi Festival Cremona, the Musica Antiqua Festival Bruges, the Festival Potsdam Sanssouci, and the Innsbrucker Festwochen der Alten Musik. In the years 2014–16 the ensemble participated in the European promotion program “eeemerging, Emerging European Ensembles Project.”

Voces Suaves regularly joins together with other ensembles in order to perform larger-scale works, such as Monteverdi’s Vespers or Schütz’s so-called Swan Song (Psalms 119 & 110 and German Magnificat). Moreover, Voces Suaves has maintained long-standing collaborations with Jörg-Andreas Bötticher and Johannes Strobl.

Since 2015 various recordings by Voces Suaves have been released on the claves records, Ambronay éditions, Arcana (Outhere Music), and Deutsche Harmonia Mundi labels, and been honored with international prizes (including the Diapason découverte).

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