Since its first concerts in 1991, Concerto Copenhagen (CoCo) has been a leading Early Music orchestra, performing Baroque, Classical and Early Romantic music. With artistic director, conductor, and harpsichordist, Lars Ulrik Mortensen, at the helm, CoCo has become synonymous with a special, methodological approach to working with historical material. CoCo unites artistic authenticity with innovation and through original and uncompromising interpretations, the music is given new life and renewed relevance to a modern audience. Since 1999, the collaboration between CoCo and Lars Ulrik Mortensen has led to an exciting artistic and musical journey, appreciated and praised by audiences and critics around the world. With a unique repertoire that combines well-known European music with lesser-known works of Scandinavian origin as well as new music, CoCo marked its 30th anniversary in 2021. In 2022 CoCo won the Danish National Radio’s P2 Artist of the Year Award.
Lars Ulrik Mortensen has been active as a conductor for 25 years, and for almost 20 years he has worked exclusively with period instruments and original performance practice. He has toured most of the world and played with some of the most prominent international Early Music ensembles, including Holland Baroque Society, Irish Baroque Orchestra, Nederlandse Bachvereniging, and Collegium 1704. He has participated in many iconic recordings released by Deutsche Grammophon/Archiv Produktion, ECM, EMI, Naxos and cpo. In the early years, Mortensen studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Music and afterwards with Trevor Pinnock in London. Between 1996 and 1999, he was professor of harpsichord and performance practice at the Hochschule für Musik in Munich, and he continues to teach at prestigious institutions around the world, including Mozarteum Salzburg, Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, and The Juilliard School of Music in New York. Mortensen has been the artistic director of Concerto Copenhagen since 1999 and is today the epitome of the orchestra’s artistic, creative, and cultural identity. In 2007 he received Denmark’s most prestigious music award, the Léonie Sonning Music Award, and since then he has continued to further develop and refine his artistic work.
