Now in his forty-fifth year as Music Director and Founder of AmorArtis, Johannes Somary has achieved a prominent international career. He has conducted such ensembles as the English Chamber Orchestra, New Orleans Symphony, and London’s Royal Philharmonic. He has participated in many international festivals including those in Sion, Dubrovnik, Madeira, Israel, and Greece.

He has worked with such renowned singers as Elly Ameling, Sheila Armstrong, Maureen Forrester, Ernst Haeflinger, Benjamin Luxon, Felicity Palmer, and John Shirley-Quirk, and with such well-known instrumentalists as David Bar-Ilan, Garrick Ohlsson, Aaron Rosand, and Dizzy Gillespie.

Maestro Somary’s discography claims over fifty recordings, including four Stereo Review Record-of-the-Year Awards. Many of his recordings have been re-released on compact disc. The most recent of these re-releases is a disc entitled Russian Favorites for Strings, which includes Tchaikovsky’s Serenade in C and works by Arensky, Borodin, and Prokofiev, on Vanguard Classics Ultra Analog. Among his new discs is one on Premier, which features him in his dual role as conductor and composer. This disc is entitled Three Is Company, the name of one of his compositions recorded.

Born in Switzerland, Johannes Somary is active as an organist, and has received critical acclaim for his recent recordings of Handel organ concertos. In Fanfare it is written: “Somary plays a charming organ … that has a bell-like positif. These organ concertos rival the best versions of Op. 4 in the catalog.” Commissioned by the Jefferson Music Festival, Maestro Somary’s dramatic cantata Is This Life? was given its premier at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. in June 1994, with Michael Moriarty as narrator. The Washington Post remarked after the performance: “The musical language is attractive, with its myriad texts. From the podium, Somary got results which were right on the mark.”