PROGRAM 2024

The Ensemble I Zefirelli, founded in Hamburg, stands for a breath of fresh air in early music. Since 2017, I Zefirelli has brought together six musicians with solo and chamber music experience, who have dedicated themselves to historically informed performance practice. The ensemble is named after Zephyr, the god of the west wind, who is also known as the herald of spring.
I Zefirelli has already performed at renowned festivals and in concert series throughout Europe, such as WDR3 Alte Musik, Festival Oude Muziek Utrecht, Internationale Handel Festival Göttingen and Innsbrucker Festwochen der Alten Musik. In 2017, the young musicians received funding from the Career Center of the HfMT Hamburg for their innovative concert program Mr. Handel in the Pub, which makes the flowing transitions between baroque music and folk tangible and was premiered in an English pub. The main focus of this program is on the metropolis of London and its musical life around 1700.
In 2019 the ensemble won the WDR3 special prize at the International H.I.F. Biber Competition and in 2021 the Bärenreiter Urtext Prize at the international göttingen Handel Competition, for the finale of which the ensemble arranged the Handel opera Berenice, Regina di Egitto in chamber music for their cast and rounded it off with specially composed recitatives. For the year 2022, I Zefirelli was selected for the European scholarship program EEEMERGING+ for up-and-coming young early music ensembles, which is supported by the Creative Europe funding program of the European Union.