Ensemble amarcord

amarcord
Five members in 2013
Background information
Origin	Leipzig, Germany
Genres	a cappella music
Years active	1992 (1992)–present
Website	www.amarcord.de

amarcord is a German male classical vocal ensemble based in Leipzig, founded in 1992 by five former members of the Thomanerchor. They primarily perform Medieval music, Renaissance music as well as collaborating with contemporary composers. Until 2013, the group's name was ensemble amarcord.

The ensemble typically performs as a quintet, singers have included

As members of the Thomanerchor, which Johann Sebastian Bach had directed in his time, the singers received the same vocal training and the knowledge of a vast repertory. The ensemble attended masterclasses with the Hilliard Ensemble and the King's Singers. In 2000 they were granted a scholarship from the Deutscher Musikrat () (German Music Council, a member of the International Music Council) and were named to the Bundesauswahl Konzerte Junger Künstler, which recognized young professional musicians and provides financial support for their concert engagements. They have appeared at international festivals and undertaken tours of Europe, North America, the Middle East, South East Asia and Australia.

The first half of their concert programs is typically devoted to sacred music, while the second half shows secular music. In their first concert at the Rheingau Musik Festival on 29 August 2002 they stepped in for the Chanticleer and performed in the Unionskirche, Idstein. They sang music of Pierre de la Rue, William Byrd, Albert de Klerk () (1917–1998), and Francis Poulenc's Laudes de Saint Antoine de Padoue in the first half, works of Schubert, The Beatles, Otto Mortensen and others in the second. Their concerts programs, which they comment with a sense of humour, usually concentrate on a theme, such as Musik und Musiker in Paris (Music and Musicians in Paris) in another concert of the festival in Wiesbaden-Frauenstein on 26 August 2004. The first half contained compositions of Pierre de la Rue, Johannes Ockeghem, Pérotin, Gioachino Rossini and Poulenc's Quatre petites prières de Saint François d'Assise, the second half took through the centuries again with entertaining works of Pierre Certon, Pierre Passereau, Orlande de Lassus, Camille Saint-Saëns and Dans la montagne of Jean Cras. Their concert in 2010 in Schloss Johannisberg picked up the festival's theme Fernweh.