Members

• Mick Swithinbank

  Tenor and director

  Mick’s first experience of singing was as a choirboy at Ely Cathedral (England) from the age of 8, where the choir sang at least eight services every week. After singing in chamber choirs in Holland and France, he became a founder member of the Art of Music in 1993 and its director in 1996. He enjoys delving into the inexhaustible seams of little known Renaissance music, looking for undiscovered gems.

  

• Jennifer Schofield

  Soprano

  Jennifer sang in various ensembles while at Oxford University, including the Arcadian Singers and the Oxford Bach Choir (under Christopher Robinson) and subsequently joined the Elysian Singers of London. She has also performed as solo soprano with chamber and church choirs in the UK, Germany and Luxembourg. She has been a member of the Art of Music since 2010.

  

• Magdalena (Magda) Mateńko

  Soprano

  Magdalena sang in the Warsaw University Choir, then in early and baroque music ensembles in Warsaw [Ars Antiqua, La Tempesta]. As a singer, she has attended early music workshops in Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary. In Luxembourg, in addition to the Art of Music, she sings in the Chœur symphonique de la Grande Région and participates in occasional musical projects both as a choir and solo singer.

  

• Marita Thomas

  Contralto

  Marita has a passion for music, the foundations for which were laid in her early childhood when she discovered the beauty of harmonies while listening to her mother sing and her father play the piano. She has enjoyed singing with choirs in every place where she has lived, including the Ruhrgebiet (the area where she was born and grew up), Frankfurt and its surroundings, Luxembourg and Vienna. She became the alto when The Art of Music was founded in 1993, left the group in 2006 when she moved to Vienna and rejoined the ensemble in 2013 after her return to Luxembourg.

  

• Edward Seymour

  Bass

  Edward knew of Tallis and Byrd from the chapel choir at school, but his first real contact with early music came via the Robert Carver mass in Baxter & Bullock’s church opera ‘The Passioun o Sanct Andraa’. So he became the bass when the Art of Music was set up in 1993. Their performance of Taverner’s ‘Quemadmodum’ led him to taking up the bass and tenor viol a few years later.

  

• Achim Holz

  Bass

  Achim, a German national, joined the Art of Music in 2023. He started singing in the school choir and learnt the trumpet during his youth. He rediscovered his passion for performing music in 2012 and since then has performed with various choirs in Luxembourg including project choirs. This allowed him to perform choir music from the Baroque (Bach, Vivaldi and Händel) to Mozart and Mendelssohn, and also modern music (Orff, Leavit, Lloyd-Webber). Achim is currently a permanent member of the Chorale Mixte du Conservatoire de la Ville de Luxembourg, Lux Vocalis and Cantus Gaudium.

  

• Vincent Soubeyran

  Baritone

  Vincent, who joined the Art of Music in 2022, is a dual French and Luxembourg national. He started learning the violin when he was 8 and has never given up since, also taking up the mandolin and nyckelharpa. His singing experiences include: church choirs and scout groups, and, since the 90s, the Choir of the Paris Orchestra, the Paris Bach Ensemble, the Trier University Choir, the Speechor, the Luxembourg Rumanian Choir, the Luxembourg Madrigal, Eurocantica, the Luxembourg Chamber Choir, the INECC Interregional Choir, Ad Libitum and Lux Vocalis.