Gutenberg Soloists

The Gutenberg Soloists were founded in 2020 as part of the Telemann Project undertaken at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany. The group was heard on the project's first two recordings, devoted to the so-called Französischer Jahrgang cantatas of Telemann. The Gutenberg Soloists (the English plural term is used even in German contexts) grew out of an earlier collaboration between conductor and cellist Felix Koch and the music program at Johannes Gutenberg University; Koch had joined with the Gutenberg Kammerchor to record Bach's Ascension Oratorio, BWV 11, in 2018. Koch assumed the leadership of the university's new Telemann Project, which aims to record music from the composer's vast corpus of underexposed choral music. Koch brought to the project his well-established Neumeyer Consort instrumental group, but he realized that a historically accurate performance of Telemann's choral music would require something different from the well-established Kammerchor. The result was the Gutenberg Soloists, comprising a group of 12 singers. Singers of the solo parts in Telemann's works, as was arguably the case in Telemann's time, are drawn from the ranks of the group. Some of the members are drawn from standout students in the choral academy of the Collegium Musicum Mainz, who gain wide experience in a variety of solo and ensemble settings, while others come from a variety of other European music academies, both students and teachers. The Gutenberg Soloists have also attracted internationally known artists-in-residence, including Elisabeth Scholl, Agnes Kovacs, Gotthold Schwarz, and Klaus Mertens, who perform as soloists with the group. In 2020, the Gutenberg Soloists and the Neumeyer Consort, with Koch as conductor, released the first volume in a projected cycle of Telemann's complete church cantatas on the CPO label. The album was one of a pair devoted to the so-called Französischer Jahrgang ("French Year") set of cantatas from 1714 and 1715. The term was Telemann's own and referred to the French stylistic traits, such as French dance rhythms, in the cantatas. The second volume of Französischer Jahrgang cantatas appeared on CPO in 2022.
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