Nele Vertommen Baroque oboe, recorder, artistic director

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.