Profile

Eric Mentzel came to the UO School of Music from Germany, where he lived for nearly 15 years. He is a specialist in historically-informed performance and has enjoyed an international career as a concert soloist, working with such conductors as Andrew Parrott, Howard Arman, Paul van Nevel, and Jean Tubery. He has appeared at major festivals and premiere concert venues across Europe, including the Holland Festival, the Edinburgh Festival, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Brussels Palais de Beaux Arts, the Alte Oper in Frankfurt, and the Barber Institute of Fine Arts in Birmingham; concert tours have taken him as far as Japan and Australia. He is also known for his close collaboration with the most highly regarded ensembles in the early music field, such as Sequentia, the Ferrara Ensemble, the Boston Camerata, and the Huelgas Ensemble. He has appeared on nearly 60 CD recordings for Sony, Decca, BMG, Harmonia Mundi, Arcana, Opus 111, Raumklang, Naxos, and Capriccio, and his recordings have been awarded numerous awards, including the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik (German Grammy), the Diapason d'Or de l'Annee, and the Choc de Musique (French recording awards). 

In 1998, Mentzel founded Vox Resonat, an ensemble of soloists devoted to the performance of medieval and Renaissance vocal music that recorded two CDs for the Marc Aurel Edition label in Germany. He re-formed that ensemble in Oregon in 2013 and they became especially known for their Day of the Dead concerts in the Hope Abbey Mausoleum in the historic Eugene Masonic Cemetery. In 2015, Mentzel also became the Artistic Director of the Seattle Medieval Women’s Choir, succeeding their founding director.

In addition to his work in oratorio and early music, Mentzel has long been involved in the contemporary music scene, premiering new works by Alfred Schnittke, Henri Pousseur, Andrew Toovey, Johannes Fritsch, Volker Staub, and Garrett Fisher. At Hamburg's Opera Stabile, he sang the role of Ubu's wife in the German premiere of Toovey's chamber opera, UBU; he was also featured in the German premiere of Schnittke's Life With An Idiot in Wuppertal and Gelsenkirchen. He was tenor soloist with the Royal Walloon Chamber Orchestra in the world premiere of Le Sablier du Phénix by Henri Pousseur, and performed compositions by Hugues Dufourt and Jonathan Harvey at the Ars Musica Festival in Brussels. Mentzel appears on the world premiere recording of Volker Staub's Suarogate, commissioned by Saarland Radio, and was heard in the world premiere of Yokohama by Johannes Fritsch, which was broadcast live across Europe as part of Radio Hessen's Forum Neue Musik. For Projekt Südbrücke, a theater piece that used as its performing space a railroad bridge spanning the Rhine, he collaborated with Cologne performance artist Angie Hiesl. More recently he sang and recorded the lead role in the world premiere of Stargazer, and appeared in the world premiere of Three Marys, both operas by Seattle composer Garrett Fisher.

Eric Mentzel has taught widely in Europe and North America. He has served as guest professor at the Schola Cantorum in Basel, Switzerland, the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague, Netherlands, and the University of Music and Performing Arts in Stuttgart, Germany, where he was supported by a grant from the Deutsche-Amerikanische Austausch Dienst (DAAD). He has also taught at the Vancouver Early Music Programme, where he also served as program director;  the San Francisco Early Music Society; Amherst Early Music; the Port Townsend Early Music Workshop, and Ars Vocalis Mexico.