Mike Fentross

Dutch string player Mike Fentross has built a reputation through his work on the lute, theorbo, vihuela, and Baroque guitar. He directs the ensemble La Sfera Armoniosa, which he established himself, and maintains an active role as an educator throughout the Netherlands.

In the late 1980s he studied under Toyohiko Satoh at the Royal Conservatory in the Hague, later pursuing additional instruction with Nigel North and José Miguel Moreno. During the 1990s he completed an apprenticeship as a continuo player with Les Arts Florissants and other period-instrument ensembles across Europe. His 1994 victory at the Van Wassenaer Competition in Amsterdam marked a turning point; by the close of the decade the School for Early Music noted that he had “earned his spurs” as a specialist whose recordings featured leading figures both within and outside early music circles, among them Yo-Yo Ma, violinist Lucy van Dael, and conductor Jaap van Zweden.

La Sfera Armoniosa took shape in 1991 and has sustained its activities into the late 2010s. Fentross has also directed larger-scale projects, such as Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 at the Festival for Ancient Music in Utrecht and a seldom-staged mounting of Marco da Gagliano’s early opera Dafne. Since 1997 he has instructed lute and continuo at his alma mater, the Royal Conservatory in the Hague.

His discography remains extensive in the roles of soloist, ensemble participant, and conductor. In 1997 he joined the BRISK recorder quartet for the album Music of the Spheres, devoted to English Renaissance consort songs and instrumental works. Under his leadership La Sfera Armoniosa has issued several recordings, including the Handel collection La Lucrezia with contralto Sonia Prina and two infrequently heard operas by seventeenth-century Italian composer Francesco Cavalli—La Rosinda and L’Ipermestra, the latter released in 2019 on the Challenge Classics label.