Bell Orchestre is a collaborative instrumental group based in Montreal. Its six members come from wildly divergent musical backgrounds, and the unlikely chemistry that results from their collaboration is the very thing that sustains their connection. It’s as if the group as a whole has tapped into a very particular, very distinct energy like that of an approaching storm. In many ways, Bell Orchestre is the sum of not only its parts, but of its influences and inspirations. Among those influences can be listed such diverse artists as Lee “Scratch” Perry, Arvo Pärt, Charles Mingus, and Talk Talk. But ultimately they work together to create something that none of them has quite heard before.   The experience of listening to Bell Orchestre is almost that of experiencing a form of synesthesia: the result is a collage-like construction of not just sound, but visual elements as well. The result then is not so much cinematic as it is evocative: Bell Orchestre have not just written the music to the film—they have created an invisible film that only comes to life in the listening.

André de Ridder begins as the new General Music Director of the Theater Freiburg in September 2022. He is known for his stylistic versatility, projects, and collaborations with orchestras such as the Chicago Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Finnish Radio Symphony, BBC Symphony, Orquesta Nacional de España, Orchestre de Paris and Rotterdam Philharmonic. The current season features adventurous programming, genre-defying performance curating, a tour in Germany, debuts with the Gulbenkian Orchestra and the OSM, and return performances with prestigious ensembles. Dubbed a “livewire conductor” (The Times), de Ridder is equally active in the field of opera, collaborating with some of the most prominent opera composers and stage directors of our time while embracing the standard repertoire. In 2013, he founded s t a r g a z e, which performs a range of projects from Bach to avant-garde electronics. His award-winning discography includes the hugely successful Four Seasons Recomposed by Max Richter on Deutsche Grammophon.