Johannette Zomer

The Dutch soprano Johannette Zomer has specialized in Baroque music and has often collaborated with the most forward-looking performers and conductors in the field. She has also given recitals of mainstream and contemporary material. Zomer was born in the Netherlands in 1972. Her entire family was musical, and she started taking flute lessons at eight. At first, however, she opted for a career as an analyst in a microbiology lab, singing in a choir on the side. A fellow chorister took her aside and urged her to develop her vocal gift, and she enrolled at the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam, studying with Charles van Tassel. After receiving her diploma in 1997, Zomer began to find places in concerts led by top Baroque specialists including Reinhard Goebel, Thomas Hengelbrock, Gustav Leonhardt, Frans Brüggen, Ton Koopman, and Philippe Herreweghe. Her own recitals have been accompanied by fortepianist Arthur Schoonderwoerd or theorbo player Fred Jacobs. Zomer made her operatic debut as Tebaldo in Verdi's Don Carlo at the Nederlandse Reisopera in 1996 and has since regularly appeared in operatic roles. In 2013, she formed her own group, the Tulipa Consort, which has appeared at the Göttinger Handel Festspiele in Germany. Zomer made her recording debut with Jacobs in 2003 with Splendore di Roma, an album of early Baroque songs. That album was recorded for the Dutch label Channel Classics; Zomer has continued to record there and for the French label Alpha, which specialized in boutique recordings encompassing music and visual art. Her album JUST Bach, featuring Baroque oboist Bart Schneemann, appeared on Channel Classics in 2017; the two had earlier joined forces on Love & Madness, a collection of Handel arias. This was followed in 2018 by Symphony While the Swans Come Forward, a collection of arias and songs by Henry Purcell on which Zomer was joined by the Dutch Baroque orchestra La Sfera Armoniosa.