About the conductor
Jeroen Spitteler leads and conducts (chamber) choirs. Over the years he has also built up extensive experience conducting orchestras, and he is active as a singer, composer and arranger. From a young age, he sang at the Cathedral Basilica of Saint John in Den Bosch, where he began his musical career as a boy soprano and soloist in the Schola Cantorum under the direction of Maurice Pirenne. For many years he sang with ensembles including Cappella Amsterdam, the Netherlands Bach Society and Cappella Pratensis. For some years now he has been active as a baritone with Studium Chorale in Maastricht and with the vocal ensemble Cappella Sacelli, which he founded.
After studying Classics at the University of Amsterdam, Jeroen Spitteler studied choral conducting with Daniël Reuss at the Conservatory of Amsterdam and took lessons from teachers including Jos van Veldhoven, Jan Bogaarts and Paul van Nevel. He subsequently studied solo voice at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague with Sasja Hunnego.
The repertoire he engages with as a conductor ranges from the early Middle Ages to music whose ink is barely dry — and from a cappella choral music to large-scale works for choir and orchestra. Although this marks him out as a generalist, his particular love for 16th-century polyphony led to the founding of Ensemble Hermes. There he trains singers to reach the essence of polyphony by working from the original notation and through historical performance practice.
Jeroen is co-initiator and artistic advisor of Couleur Vocale, a successful concert series for chamber choirs at the Waalse Kerk in Amsterdam, and he regularly coaches both singers and conductors. Alongside guest conducting engagements — recently with chamber choir Coqu in Utrecht — he is the permanent conductor and artistic director of Photonen Vocaal Ensemble in Amsterdam, of Ensemble Hermes, and of the women’s chamber choir Les Dames Vocales, which he founded. He also leads the Midsummer Ensemble, a summer project for choir and orchestra with which he performs large-scale choral and orchestral works, and the Nederlands Projectkoor, with which he performed Frank Martin’s double-choir Mass at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam in 2019.
His love of music and literature has, in recent years, given rise to a growing body of compositions, particularly for choir — such as the cycle Drei Gesänge der vergangenen Jahre, as well as The May Magnificat for women’s choir, Threni for mixed chamber choir, and The Moon was But a Chin of Gold / Onder die Maan, written for Photonen on texts by Emily Dickinson and Etty Hillesum. He has also arranged medieval melodies, as in Ave Generosa and Bloem der bloemen. For the Midsummer Ensemble he made (pandemic-era) arrangements of works by Rossini, Brahms and Schütz. For orchestra he wrote The Canticle of Brother Sun and Sister Moon. The Sint Maartenscantate received its première in November 2022 at his farewell from the Utrechts Vocaal Ensemble. The Songbook for the Bedside Singers and Cinque Pensieri di Gandhi both premièred in 2024. For more information, see www.jeroenspitteler.nl.