Jens Franke

Biography

Jens Franke, born to an eminent German musical family, trained at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and King's College, London.  An artist of eclectic taste, equally at home in the concert room or theatre, he has worked with English National Ballet and was formerly orchestral guitarist of the European Union Youth Orchestra, in which capacity he appeared in concert with Bernard Haitink, playing such venues as the Concertgebouw, the Konzerthaus in Berlin, and Sadler's Wells. He has commissioned a number of new works for guitar including a theatre cycle by Oscar Colomina i Bosch, setting Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies (an eighteenth-century listing of London prostitutes), premièred at the Barbican Centre, London in December 2011. Recording credits include two EPs, eight CDs for Schott London, associated with a series of Romantic and Baroque anthologies, an album of music by Johann Kaspar Mertz (Stone Records), a collection of Schubert songs with Anna Huntley, recorded at the Wigmore Hall (Quartz), and with his guitar duet partner Jørgen Skogmo, the complete ensemble works of Antoine de Lhoyer (Naxos).