After having worked as a microbiology analyst for several years, the Dutch soprano Johannette Zomer studied at the Sweelinck Conservatorium Amsterdam with bass Charles van Tassel, where she was awarded her Performance Diploma. She later received coaching from Diane Forlano (London), Claudia Visca (Wuppertal) and Marlena Malas (New York). Her repertoire ranges from medieval music through all music of the baroque and classical eras, including opera, but also Lieder, French Romanticism and Contemporary music.
Johannette’s concert appearances are many and various. She has worked
with Baroque specialists such as Philippe Herreweghe, Ton Koopman, Frans
Brüggen, Gustav Leonhardt, René Jacobs, Reinard Goebel, Ivor Bolton, Jordi
Savall, Thomas Hengelbrock and Paul
McCreesh, but has also worked with conductors including Kent Nagano, Daniel
Harding, Ivan Fischer, Marcus Creed and Valery Gergiev. She regularly gives
recitals accompanied by theorbo player Fred Jacobs and fortepiano specialist
Arthur Schoonderwoerd.
Johannette made her opera debut as Tebaldo in Verdi's Don Carlo with the Dutch Travel Opera Company. She has made regular appearances in roles including Belinda, Pamina*, La Musica, Euridice, Dalinda and Ilia, and also as Amanda in Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre and Mélisande in Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande*.
She contributes regularly to CD-recording projects. A few of her releases are the Bach Cantatas* disc with the English ensemble Florilegium, for which she won an Edison Award, the cd With Endless Teares* with theorbist Fred Jacobs, showing the development of English 17th Century Song and the cd Love & Madness*, a disc with Händel aria’s together with Bart Schneemann, oboe (all on Channel Classics).
In 2013 Johannette founded her own ensemble the Tulipa Consort. The name of this Dutch ensemble, whose focus is on repertoire of the 17th and 18th centuries, refers to the importance and symbolic significance of the Tulip in the history of the Low Countries. The ensemble has played, amongst other places, at the Early Music Festivals of Göttingen, Saintes, Den Haag and Amsterdam, and released their first CD with Canti Sacri by Antonio Vivaldi in Spring 2016.
Amongst her future highlights are St Matthew Passion with Reinhard Goebel and North Netherlands Symphony Orchestra; symphonic Schubert songs with Orkest van het Oosten; a tour with her own Tulipa Consort and Bart Schneemann in the Netherlands, with their recently recorded program BACH2WAYS; and a miniature version of Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro with bass-baritone Frans Fiselier, pianist and actor.
October 2017