Nele Vertommen (°1999) has been fascinated by early music since the age of five when she first heard Bach’s St Matthew Passion. It was instantly clear to her that she wanted to be able to play this music herself.

When she discovered, after two years of playing the oboe, that those beautiful oboe solos from the Matthew Passion were actually written for the Baroque oboe, she made the decision to become a Baroque oboist.

At the age of fourteen, she began studying Baroque oboe, and by fifteen she was a student at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels in the class of Marcel Ponseele. After a gap year in The Hague in which she studied both Baroque oboe and recorder, she received her bachelor’s degree with highest distinction.

Once back in Belgium, she completed her master’s degree in Brussels, also with highest honors. For her graduation, she received a prize from the artistic foundation “Horlait-Dapsens”.

Nele performs regularly with various ensembles including, Il Gardellino (BE), A Nocte Temporis (BE), Collegium Vocale Gent (BE), La Chapelle Harmonique (FR), Collegium Marianum (CZ), Gli Angeli Genève(CH) and La Petite Bande (BE), Concerto Köln (DE). In 2021, she was selected by Klara to be part of their eponymous program « twenty musicians in their twenties ».

For several years now, she has been working with her partner Beniamino Paganini to develop the ensemble Musica Gloria. This ensemble plays for organisations such as BOZAR, 30CC, AMUZ, Mubafa, Festivals de Wallonie and Concertgebouw Brugge and has so far recorded 4 CDs.

Recently, Nele started playing the dulcian and is focusing more on the recorder again so that she can also add 16th- and 17th-century music to her repertoire.

The first time she entered a competition, in September 2021, she won first prize. This was at the International Telemann Competition in Magdeburg.