Nocturnalia Ensemble

Nocturnalia Ensemble is composed of three young performers (Mojca Jerman on the violin, Pablo Tejedor-Gutiérrez on the cello/gamba and Alex Mastichiadis on historical keyboards) who look to offer fresh and innovative concerts to their audiences, capable of awakening in the listeners the different emotions and feelings that 17th and 18th-century composers tried to express in their music.

Nocturnalia believes that Early Music is tremendously contemporary, given the degree of freedom that it offers to performers and the unparalleled creativity that improvisation and ornamentation create. Our unique personal and musical connection reflects our European origins, embracing concepts from our respective languages that define us: Šarovít (colourful and picturesque), Duende (the creative struggle to create deep art forms), and Μεράκι (to do something with soul).

As an ensemble, Nocturnalia was born while playing night sessions of music by Mozart and Schmelzer in the Romanesque Abbey of Ambronay during the summer of 2021, while its members met in the context of the EEEmerging+ European Academy. However, Nocturnalia first concert took place some time later, in January 2023 in Athens at the Music Hub Conservatory. After this first public performance, other invitations followed to perform the programme Wit and Mirth, on English 17th-century folk and elite music, at the Utrecht Oude Muziek festival (Theaterhuis de Berenkuil) and the Contratemps Festival (Sant Cugat, near Barcelona).

In October 2023, Nocturnalia was invited to do a Slovenian tour that included performances at the Botanical Gardens of Ljubljana University and one of the oldest Renaissance churches in Slovenia at Idrija, performing a new programme, Flora Carniolica. This programme, focused on the connection between music and nature in Early Modern times, was devised to take part in The International Early Music Competition in Loire Valley (France), where Nocturnalia was selected as a semifinalist ensemble by a jury led by William Christie before the competition was cancelled.

Recent engagements during 2024 include concerts in Ljubljana (Tartini Festival) or Chios (Music Festival), curating a programme called La Scuola Delle Nazione highlighting the importance of Tartini and his students, notably including modern premières of Michele Stratico. In addition, the ensemble has been selected by the Brighton Early Music Festival as part of the BREMF Live! Scheme 2024-25 and it will be on residency for different concerts, masterclasses and workshops.

Future and recent plans include concerts at the Brighton Early Music Festival, the National Centre for Early Music in York, Salisbury Early Music Festival, the Foundling Museum, Salisbury Musick Festival, and the Roman River Festival, and appearances at the Festival dei Giovani Musicisti Europei of the Academia Montis Regalis in Northern Italy, or the Tartini Festival in Piran. On the other hand, Nocturnalia is currently developing a programme around Mediterranean composers (mainly based on premieres of archival discoveries) for a CD recording and a residence in Greece.

Recently, Nocturnalia Ensemble was selected by an international panel and a very competitive process to be one of the 10 ensembles of the Emerging European Ensembles 2026-2027 scheme, a recognition supporting promising young groups in the early music field. As part of the scheme, a number of residencies and concerts are being prepared, notably at the Festival Baroque de la Tarentaise, Helsinki Baroque Orchestra and Festival de Torroella.