Catalina Vicens
Award-winning musician, Catalina Vicens, a native of Chile and now resident in Basel, Switzerland, started her international career at an early age. By age 20 she had already played in the main concert-halls of more than ten countries in North and South America, including the Teatro Colón de Buenos Aires Argentina, the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia and the Teatro Municipal do São Paulo.
Vicens combines a vibrant international soloist and research career. Having specialized in performing on antique keyboard instruments, she has been invited to play on the oldest playable harpsichord in the world, featured in her latest recording “Il Cembalo di Partenope” (Diapason d’Or); the 15th century gothic organ of St. Andreas in Ostönnen (one of the oldest and best-preserved organs in the world), as well as in several prestigious collections in the UK, Europe, Japan and USA. She is also recognized for her work with medieval keyboards, working alongside specialized instrument builders in the reconstruction of medieval and renaissance organs. Part of this project is the upcoming double CD with old and new music performed in several of these instruments.
She is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of Harpsichord at Oberlin Conservatory (USA) and harpsichord-research lecturer at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels (Belgium). She has also been invited to give master-classes on a wide range of historical keyboard music, from the 13th to the late 18th century at U. of California, Berkeley, the Longy School of Music Cambridge (USA), Universität der Künste Berlin and the Folkwang Universität der Künste Essen (Germany), and teaches regularly at the Early Music Academy in Lunenburg, Early Music Course at Burg Fürsteneck and the International Portative Organ Days in Germany, which she curates since 2011. In 2016 she served as a jury member at the Jurow International Harpsichord Competition. From Fall 2019 Vicens will be harpsichord lecturer at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels.
Vicens performs and records regularly as a member of ensembles of Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque and New music in Europe, USA and South America. She is the artistic director of Servir Antico, with whom she aims to shed light on the less-known repertoire and intellectual heritage of the humanistic period (13th-16th century). She has performed under the direction of well-known conductors such as Otto-Werner Müller, Gottfried von der Goltz, Andrea Marcon, Skip Sempé and Carlos Miguel Prieto.
Catalina Vicens studied at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, Musikhochschule Freiburg, and the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Leiden University / Orpheus Institute Ghent.
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