Louise Acabo & Thomas Höft

The very young but impressive harpsichordist Louise Acabo, the great discovery of the Utrecht Early Music Festival 2019, provides us with an unforgettable round of storytelling. The biblical adventures of Hezekiah, Gideon and Jacob are whispered to her by Johann Kuhnau: the driving force behind Leipzig’s Thomanerchor before Bach, and composer of the earliest programme music in history.

French harpsichordist Louise Acabo is one of the most promising players of the latest generation. In 2018, at the age of nineteen, she won the first prize at the prestigious Corneille Competition in Rouen. Born in Strasbourg, she studied at the Schola Cantorum in Basel.

Thomas Höft studied art history, literature, musicology and psycholinguistics in Hamburg. He works as a writer, director and dramaturge in very different fields of art. He is responsible for major historical thematic exhibitions in German and Austrian museums and writes non-fiction books. He has become known for his numerous plays and opera librettos for the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Komische Oper Berlin and the Bregenz Festival. Since 1994 Thomas Höft works as a dramaturge of the Festival styriarte Graz, which was founded for Nikolaus Harnoncourt. From 2012 to 2018 he was director of the Cologne Center for Early Music (ZAMUS) and Artistic Director of the Cologne Festival of Early Music. In 2018 and 2019 he was responsible for the dramaturgy of the Musikfestspiele Potsdam Sanssouci, and he was co-curator of the Utrecht Early Music Festival in 2019.