Gli Angeli Genève was founded in 2005 by Stephan MacLeod. A variable-geometry ensemble playing on period istruments (or copies of instruments), the ensemble is made up of musicians with careers in the field of Baroque music, but who have the particularity of not only playing early music. This eclecticism guarantees the vitality of their enthusiasm. It is also a driving force behind their curiosity.

Right from the beginning of a musical adventure that for several years concentrated solely on live performances of the complete Bach Cantatas in Geneva, with three concerts per season, Gli Angeli Genève has been the setting for encounters between some of the most famous singers and instrumentalists of the international baroque scene and young graduates of the High Schools of Music of Basel, Lyon, Lausanne and Geneva. 

Internationally acclaimed since its first two recordings in 2009 and 2010, the ensemble now gives more than fifteen concerts a season in Geneva, as part of its Bach Cantatas, a series of annual concerts at Victoria Hall, the annual Haydn-Mozart festival created by the ensemble in 2021, and finally the Chambre des Anges, a new concert series inaugurated in 2022 and dedicated to chamber music.

The ensemble is equally in demand in Switzerland and abroad for performances not only of Bach, but also Tallis, Josquin, Schein, Schütz, Johann Christoph Bach, Weckmann, Buxtehude, Rosenmüller, Haydn, Mozart and others. In recent seasons, Gli Angeli Genève has been in residence at the Utrecht Festival and the Thuringer Bachwochen, and has performed in Basel, Zurich, Lucerne, Barcelona, Nürnberg, Bremen, Stuttgart, Brussels, Milan, Wroclaw, Paris, Ottawa, Vancouver, Amsterdam and The Hague. Gli Angeli Genève is a regular guest at the Saintes and Utrecht Festivals, the Bremen Musikfest and the Vancouver Bach Festival. The ensemble made its debut in 2019 at Lucerne's KKL, and was invited in 2023 to the MA Festival in Bruges, the Besançon Festival and Vézelay. On the occasion of the Haydn-Mozart Festival, Gli Angeli Genève collaborates with guest conductors and artists: Michel Corboz in 2021, Kristian Bezuidenhout in 2022, Philippe Herreweghe in 2023, and Leonardo García Alarcón in 2024.

Their recording Sacred Music of the 17th Century in Wrocław won the 2019 ICMA Award for Best Baroque Vocal Recording of the Year, and Johann Sebastian Bach’s St Matthew Passion was met with enthusiastic acclaim from both audiences and critics in Switzerland and around the world. Gli Angeli Genève’s discography also includes Bach’s Mass in B minor, his St John Passion, his Cantatas for Bass, rare concertante symphonies by Antoine Reicha with Christophe Coin, Davit Melkonyan, Chouchane Siranossian and Alexis Kossenko, a Josquin album, a recital of Mozart arias with Marina Viotti, Mozart’s Concertos for Flute and Orchestra with Alexis Kossenko and Valeria Kafelnikov, Josquin’s Malheur me bat and Buxtehude’s Membra Jesu Nostri accompanied by a work by the Swiss composer Xavier Dayer. A complete set of Bach’s cantatas based on chorale melodies, spanning 19 CDs, was released by Aparté this autumn. Coming soon: a complete set of Mozart’s concertos for wind instruments and orchestra.

In concert – as was customary in Leipzig in 1725, for example – the singers of Gli Angeli Genève are systematically positioned in front of the instruments, whether singing solos or choral parts. This allows the ensemble to place the spoken word at the centre, to devote itself entirely to conveying the text, restoring it to its rightful place, a role often lost in the Romantic practice of having a choir positioned behind an orchestra.