Dirkjan Horringa

Dirkjan Horringa, initiator and already 35 years artistic director of La Pellegrina, is originally a clarinettist by training. He studied both musicology and choral and orchestral conducting at the Utrecht University and the Utrecht Conservatoire. He now specializes in conducting semi-professional choirs and orchestras, which have a rather high musical level in Holland. This makes the work of leading these ensembles a fascinating combination of musical education and serious music making, which is a challenge to a professional musician. His main field of interest is music of the 16th, 17th and early 18th century, from Monteverdi's Vespers and Schütz to the world of renaissance and baroque music theatre. Mainly in the field of madrigal comedies (Banchieri's Barca di Venetia per Padova and Festino di Giovedi grasso) and baroque opera's by Purcell (Dido and Aeneas, The Fairy Queen) and Monteverdi (L'Orfeo) he has been active. Not long ago he staged a theatrical production of Bach's St. John's Passion. Dirkjan Horringa works with the vocal ensembles Trajecti Voces, projectkoor Festina Lente Arnhem and the La Pellegrina ProjectOrkest.  As a guest conductor he worked with the Czech vocal ensemble Vaganti, the Ukrainian vocal ensemble Musitchnyj Asamblej, the choir Confido Domino from Minsk, Belarus and ensemble Brevis from Vilnius, Lithuania. He has been a tutor in several summer schools in Italy, Poland and the Czech Republic. He is privately active as a singing tutor and vocal coach and teaches conducting. In 2016 the Czech Antonín Dvořák Association granted him an award for the promotion of Dvořák's music in the amateur music world.

Femke Huizinga

After Femke Huizinga completed her studies in philosophy cum laude, her love for the baroque violin was given free rein. She studied baroque violin and viola with Antoinette Lohmann at the Utrecht Conservatory, where she completed her Bachelor of Music with a 9.

Femke is a much sought-after orchestral musician and works as a full-time performer with the Nederlandse Bachvereniging, Anima Eterna Brugge, La Sfera Armoniosa, Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and The Northern Consort, among others. Femke is also an active chamber musician and was at the cradle of several ensembles dealing with repertoire from the early 17th century to the early 19th century. These ensembles have already been heard on stages of various European festivals (e.g. Sainte, Antwerp, Utrecht, Trieste).

Besides her work as a performing musician, she is also an enthusiastic teacher for both individual and chamber music lessons in historical performance practice. The small private teaching practice provides much inspiration and constantly leads to new insights.

Hanna Lindeijer

Hanna Lindeijer (1986) studied recorder at the 'Hogeschool voor de Kunsten' in Utrecht with Heiko ter Schegget. In her last year of the bachelor's degree in recorder, which ended with the highest attainable result, she started learning to play the baroque oboe with Frank de Bruine.

From September 2009 Hanna studied at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. After studying with recorder player Sebastien Marq for a year, she continued her education with a master's degree in baroque oboe with Frank de Bruine. As part of this master's degree, she has conducted research into the making of historical reeds and mandrels in the 17th and 18th centuries.

During and after her studies she played with Holland Baroque, the Luthers Bach Ensemble, the Orchestra of the 18th century, Concerto D'amsterdam, Theresia Youth Baroque Orchestra (an Italian orchestra that focuses on early classical music), Nederlandse Bach Vereniging, Concerto Copenhagen, Academy of Ancient Music and the Koelner Akademie. She is a regular first oboe with the Baroque orchestra Musica Amphion conducted by Pieter-Jan Belder and with Concerto D'Amsterdam.

Ricardo Rodríguez Miranda

Ricardo Rodríguez Miranda was born in Caracas, Venezuela. There he received piano and cello lessons at a young age. He developed a great interest in early music and became proficient on historical instruments such as harpsichord and viola da gamba. At the age of 16, he collaborated on the first CD recording of early music in Venezuela: Les Concerts Royaux by François Couperin, with the ensemble Musica Rhetorica. He collaborated with Isabel Palacios and Camerata de Caracas, with whom he gave concerts and made CD recordings of music from the Renaissance and Latin American Baroque. He also led the ensembles Terpsichore and Acantus.

Thanks to a scholarship from CONAC (Ministry of Culture of Venezuela), Ricardo was able to come to the Netherlands in 1992 to study with Wieland Kuijken at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague. Here he obtained the diplomas of performing and teaching musician. He also took several master classes with Jordi Savall. After his gamba studies, he spent another four years studying musicology at Utrecht University.

Ricardo performs regularly at home and abroad, with early music ensembles such as Vox Luminis, the Nederlandse Bachvereniging, the Margaretha Consort and L'Armonia Sonora. He has collaborated on numerous award-winning CD recordings and can often be heard in Bach's Matthäus and Johannes Passion, with orchestras and choirs such as the Residentie Orkest and Toonkunst Rotterdam with Collegium Delft. He has worked with musicians such as Gustav Leonhard, Richard Egarr, Jan Willem de Vriend and Jaap van Zweden.

Besides the viola da gamba, baroque dance has a special place in Ricardo's life. Since 2011, he has been teaching Renaissance and Baroque dance at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague.

Mitchell Sandler

Bass Mitchell Sandler studied at the University of California at Berkeley, before singing for five years with the renowned vocal ensemble Chanticleer, with whom he made many recordings and TV and radio appearances. Moving to the Netherlands in 1989, he did a graduate specialisation in Baroque music at the Royal Conservatory in the Hague.

Mitchell is a soloist in oratorio and opera. Dutch composer Michel van der Aa wrote a role especially for him in his new opera 'Afterlife', a work commissioned by the Dutch Opera (DNO) and the Holland Festival. Mitchell was also heard as one of the Deputati Fiaminghi (Flemish deputies) in Don Carlo by Verdi, and in the opera Tea by Tan Dun.

On a recent CD of Handel's Aci, Galatea e Polifemo Mitchell sings the role of Polifemo; he sings Lucifero on Handel's La Resurrezione with Contrasto Armonico conducted by Marco Vitale. 

With ensemble La Primavera he recorded the CD Dolci Sospiri: songs, duets and dance music of the 17th-century Neapolitan composer and lutenist Andrea Falconieri. In June 2015 Mitchell released a new CD of Handel's cantatas for solo bass with the ensemble Contrasto Armonico.

In addition to singing, Mitchell also composes and arranges. In 2013 the choir Voces Trajecti sang his Madrigals of Mirth and Melancholy,conducted by Dirkjan Horringa. Medusa, the University of Utrecht's women's choir, commissioned a work from Mitchell for their 25 year Jubilee concert in 2014.

Mitchell Sandler is a member of the Netherlands Radio Choir and the opera ensemble 'Pocket Opera' Since July 2016 he is also a certified Taijiquan instructor.

He loves to walk and cook. Together with his wife Anne Hodgkinson, he takes gastronomic walks such as "Boots and Bowtie" - www.bootsandbowtie.com