Founded in 1970 on Philippe Herreweghe’s initiative Collegium Vocale Gent was one of the first ensembles to use new ideas about baroque performance practice in vocal music. Their authentic, text-oriented, and rhetorical approach gave the ensemble its world-famous transparent sound. In recent years, it has grown organically into an extremely flexible ensemble with a wide-ranging repertoire from renaissance to contemporary music. Besides its own baroque orchestra, Collegium Vocale Gent works with several historically informed ensembles such as the Orchestre des Champs Elysées, the Freiburger Barockorchester and Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, and collaborates with prominent symphony orchestras such as the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, the Budapest Festival Orchestra and Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. Since 2017, the ensemble runs its own summer festival Collegium Vocale Crete Senesi in Tuscany.