Jan Willem de Vriend

Jan Willem de Vriend is a Dutch conductor who trained as a violinist. In 1982 he founded the Combattimento Consort Amsterdam, an ensemble devoted to music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, played on modern instruments in the light of historical practice; he led it from the violin for more than thirty years, in concerts and in staged operas by Monteverdi, Handel, Mozart and others. As a conductor he was for many years chief conductor of the orchestra in Enschede now called Phion, and afterwards principal conductor of the Residentie Orkest in The Hague. He is now principal conductor of the Wiener KammerOrchester.