Marie Heeschen, Soprano
Antonio de Sarlo, violin
Rafael Roth, violin
Guillermo Turina, cello
Felix Schönherr, harpsichord
This is an ensemble of great promise. Early Music Review 2019
Paper Kite is the soprano Marie Heeschen, the cellist Guillermo Turina, the harpsichordist Felix Schönherr and the violinists Antonio de Sarlo and Rafael Roth. All specialized in historical performance practice, they want to revive the lesser-known cantatas repertoire of the German and Italian Baroque. The group is particularly characterized by lively and rousing interpretations.
The ensemble regularly performs at international festivals, including the Utrecht Oude Muziek Festival, the MA Festival Brugge and the Rundale Festival in Riga. After receiving the Biagio-Marini Prize in 2013 the ensemble released their first CD felice un tempo in 2017, which featured a world premiere recording of a work by Giovanni Legrenzi as well as sonatas and cantatas by Giovanni Bononcini and Domenico Scarlatti. The newly recorded programme Abendandacht, featuring works from the period of the Thirty Years' War, will be released on Coviello Classics in spring 2021.
Paper Kite takes its name from a letter from the British scholar Samuel Johnson, writing to Georg Friedrich Handel 1755:
Wonderful sir! The mounting Flames of my Ambition having long aspired to the Honor of holding a small Conversation with you; but being sensible of the almost unsuperable Difficulity of getting at you, I bethought me, a Paper Kite might best reach you, and soar to your Apartment, though seated in the highest Clouds; for all the world knows, I can top you, fly as high as you will.
All members of Papert Kite trained at prestigious European conservatoires and specialized in historical performance practice. Important impulses came from working with Amandine Beyer, Jill Feldman, Michael Borgstede and Kris Verhelst.