Michael Pospíšil

Michael Pospíšil (born 1962) is a classical bass, specialising in historically informed performance. He is the founder and leader of the ensemble Ritornello which performs music of the 16th and 17th centuries for voices and a great variety of instruments. Pospíšil studied voice at the Prague Conservatory from 1981 to 1986. He took master classes with Marius van Altena and Stephen Stubbs, among others. He has collaborated internationally with ensembles such as Musica Antiqua Praha, Capella Regia Musicalis, Bornus Consort and the Tölzer Knabenchor. In 1993, he founded the ensemble Ritornello. The chamber group concentrates on music of the 16th and 17th centuries. A core group consists of three musicians who sing and are able to play several instruments. They perform music which they study scholarly from manuscripts and early publications. Their instruments are historic or faithful reproductions, including lute, theorbo, Baroque guitar and violins, hurdy-gurdy, Renaissance bagpipes and trombones, organ, dulcian, flutes, viola da braccio and viola da gamba. The ensemble performs sacred music as well as traditional songs and music for dance and banquet. They recorded for example music from Capella Regia Musicalis, a hymnal by Václav Karel Holan Rovenský in 1693–94 "as an instrument of the Counter-Reformation", including not only hymns, but small cantatas, dramatic scenes, even music of the Protestant Moravian Brethren, mostly in Czech. It has been described as "one of the jewels of Czech musical history".In 1998, Pospíšil recorded Jakub Jan Ryba's Česká mše vánoční (Czech Christmas Mass) with Gabriela Eibenová, Magdalena Kožená, Jaroslav Březina, the Calmus Ensemble and the Capella Regia Musicalis. In 2004, he sang the bass part in Bach's Christmas Oratorio in St. Martin, Idstein, with Katia Plaschka, Franz Vitzthum and the orchestra Antichi Strumenti.