Their Majesties

Musica Gloria is a young, vibrant instrumental and vocal ensemble led by Beniamino Paganini and Nele Vertommen. The ensemble aims to bring early music to listeners in a compelling, lively, colourful and historically informed way on (copies of) historical instruments. Musica Gloria’s repertoire ranges from early to late Baroque and from the most famous to the least known works. Bringing captivating, balanced and well-crafted programmes is a must for the ensemble. Depending on the programme and project, Musica Gloria consists of two to forty and beyond, young, enthusiastic musicians. The ensemble consciously chooses an approach based on respect and responsibility for the music, the musicians, all others involved, and the environment.
 
Musica Gloria attracts an enthusiastic audience and plays some thirty concerts a year, including regularly in front of full houses at national and international venues and festivals such as AMUZ (Belgium), Bachfest Leipzig (Germany), BOZAR (Belgium), 30CC (Belgium), Concertgebouw in Bruges (Belgium), De Bijloke (Belgium), Festival de Froville (France), Flagey (Belgium), Internationale Telemann-Gesellschaft (Germany), Itinéraire Baroque (France), Klara (Belgium), Kölner Philharmonie (Germany), Les Festivals de Wallonie (Belgium), Lunalia (Belgium), the MA Festival Brugge (Belgium), Mubafa (Belgium), Musica Antica (Netherlands), St. Wenceslas Music Festival (Czech Republic), Tage Alter Musik Regensburg (Germany), Trigonale (Austria) and Festival Musicale Viaggio in Italia. In 2024, Musica Gloria performed the opening concerts of the festivals Lunalia and Les Nuits de Septembre.
 
In the last years, in addition to performing these concerts, the ensemble has released many video recordings on YouTube and six CDs: “Georg Österreich’s Resurrected Treasures” (2025), “Corelli & Handel: Encounters in Rome” (2023), “The Bachs & the Flute” (2022), “Fasch’s Oboe” (2022) and two CDs with a selection of YouTube video recordings (2021 & 2023). These recordings have been listened to worldwide and received positively by numerous listeners, radio stations, TV stations and reviewers (including 5 Diapasons, 10/10 in Luister and Le Disque classique du jour on Radio France).

Pieter De Praetere is a Belgian countertenor, focusing mainly on Baroque music, and he is also a much sought-after figure in musical theatre. Pieter took up voice training with Pascal Devreese in Ronse, then at the age of sixteen he shifted to countertenor with Steve Dugardin in Antwerp. During his schooling in Literary Studies at Ghent University, he took lessons from Hilde Coppé. Shortly afterwards, he moved to the Koninklijk Conservatorium in Brussels to study with Lena Lootens.
 
As a soloist, Pieter has performed e.g. in Handel’s Messiah, Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater, and a significant portion of cantatas, motets and oratorios by Johann Sebastian Bach. Purcell, Vivaldi and their contemporaries are also often on his programme. Among others, Pieter sings with the ensembles Musica Gloria, Il Gardellino, B’Rock, BachPlus, Apotheosis, Il Fondamento, etc.
 
He has been working extensively with Beniamino Paganini and Nele Vertommen of the Musica Gloria ensemble. Together they have already completed several successful European tours. In 2020 they recorded music by Vivaldi and Purcell that was well received by the public and in the media.
 
Pieter is also active in the world of opera. He made his debut at the Bayreuth Baroque Opera Festival in 2021 with B’Rock, and with Bart Naessens in Handel’s Judas Maccabeus. In the Reaktorhalle in Munich, he played the antagonist Pierre in Leon Zmelty’s contemporary opera Invitation to a Beheading, based on the novel by Vladimir Nabokov. With the Orchestre Royal de Chambre de Wallonie, he played the role of Farnace in Mozart’s Mitridate, re di Ponto at the Festival Midsummer Mozartiade. In 2026, Pieter will make his debut with Opera Ballet Vlaanderen in the opera Meryem by director Haider Al Timimi.
 
Pieter is a much sought-after figure in the Flemish theatre landscape. His role in the opera Wij, de verdronkenen at Wintervuur Antwerp, the Oerol Festival (Netherlands), in Marstal (Denmark) and in Theater aan Zee Ostend did not go unnoticed. With Muziektheater Broder he has been touring Belgium for years with poetic family-oriented performances with and about classical music (Franzerl, Babushka, Seaking…).

Beniamino Paganini is a passionate traverso player, harpsichordist, music teacher and musicologist. He also performs on claviorgan, organ and recorder. He was named “Young Musician of the Year 2020” by the Belgian Music Press and selected as one of “twenty musicians in their twenties” in 2021 by Radio Klara. He has won several first prizes and also received the Sonderpreis der Jury at the Internationaler Telemann-Wettbewerb in Magdeburg (2021).
 
Beniamino is founder and, together with Nele Vertommen, artistic director of the ensemble Musica Gloria. With this ensemble, Beniamino performs some thirty concerts a year for festivals and concert halls such as AMUZ (Belgium), Bachfest Leipzig, BOZAR (Belgium), Concertgebouw in Bruges, De Bijloke (Belgium), Klara (Belgium), Les Festivals de Wallonie, MA Festival Brugge, Musica Antica (Netherlands) and Trigonale (Austria). He has produced numerous video recordings and six CDs with Musica Gloria, including “The Bachs & the Flute” and “Corelli & Handel: Encounters in Rome”.
 
He also collaborates in concerts and recordings with many other ensembles such as Il Gardellino (Jan de Winne and Marcel Ponseele), Scherzi Musicali (Nicolas Achten), B’Rock Orchestra and La Petite Bande (Sigiswald Kuijken). He is a harpsichord accompanist and teacher of temperaments and tuning at the Conservatoire Royal de Bruxelles.
 
Beniamino discovered his passion for early music at the age of seven. At sixteen he started his bachelor studies at both of the Royal Conservatories of Brussels, and later at the conservatories of Leuven and The Hague. He received his master’s degrees in Traverso (2016), Harpsichord (2017), Maestro al cembalo (2019) and a bachelor’s degree in Musicology (2018), all with great distinction. He studied traverso with Barthold Kuijken, Frank Theuns and Jan de Winne, Renaissance flute with Kate Clark and Patrick Beuckels, harpsichord with Frédérick Haas, Fabio Bonizzoni, Kris Verhelst and Patrick Ayrton. At the Catholic University in Leuven, Belgium, he studied musicology and obtained an Educational Master’s degree in Cultural Studies.

Nele Vertommen has been fascinated by early music since the age of five when she first heard Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. It was instantly clear to her that she wanted to be able to play this music herself. When she discovered, after two years of playing the oboe, that those beautiful solos from the St. Matthew Passion were actually written for the Baroque oboe, she made the decision to become a Baroque oboist.
 
At the age of fifteen, she was a student at the Conservatoire Royal de Bruxelles in the class of Marcel Ponseele. After a gap year in The Hague where she studied both Baroque oboe and recorder, she received her bachelor’s degree with high distinction. Once back in Belgium, she completed her master’s degree in Brussels. Upon her graduation, she received a prize from the artistic foundation Horlait-Dapsens and soon after she was selected by Radio Klara to be part of their programme “twenty musicians in their twenties”. In September 2021 she won the first prize at the Internationaler Telemann-Wettbewerb in Magdeburg. As she has a great love for earlier repertoire as well, she has been developing for the past few years her skills on earlier double reed instruments.
 
Together with her partner Beniamino Paganini, she leads Musica Gloria. This ensemble plays for festivals such as BOZAR (Belgium), Trigonale (Austria), Bachfest Leipzig, AMUZ (Belgium), Festival de Froville (France), Festivals de Wallonie, Concertgebouw in Bruges, Tage Alter Musik Regensburg, the St. Wenceslas Music Festival (Czech Republic), and she has so far recorded six CDs.
 
Besides performing with Musica Gloria, Nele regularly joins ensembles including Le Poème Harmonique, B’Rock Orchestra, A Nocte Temporis, La Chapelle Harmonique, Collegium Marianum, Gli Angeli Genève, Utopia Orchestra, Il Gardellino and Concerto Köln.