Ensemble Biography
Intesa is a duo for voice and viol formed by Lucine Musaelian and Nathan Giorgetti, dedicated to exploring the rich relationship between voice and viol through self-accompanied performance. They are 2025 City Music Foundation Artists, and with the Foundation’s support have recently recorded their debut album, engineered and produced by Jared Sacks and to be released on the Pelle d’Oca label in 2026.
Recent highlights include appearances at the Resonanzen Festival in Vienna in both 2025 and January 2026, returning to a full house at the Wiener Konzerthaus’s Mozart-Saal. International engagements have also taken them to the Utrecht Fabulous Fringe Festival, the ECOS Festival in Spain, and the Munich Residenzwoche in Germany. In the United States, the duo made their New York debut at the Harold Pratt House and in the Gotham Early Music Scene Midtown Concerts series.
In the UK, Intesa performs regularly and has appeared in the Leeds International Concert Season, the Stoke Newington Early Music Festival, the Islington Arts Festival, and the Two Moors Festival, as well as on a Scotland tour supported by the Tunnell Trust. They have also given several sold-out concerts at Handel Hendrix House and Fidelio Café in London, and held a residency at the National Centre for Early Music as part of the York Early Music Christmas Festival and the Baroque Around the Books series.
Upcoming engagements include a recital at St Martin-in-the-Fields, appearances at the Beverley Festival of Early Music and the Swaledale Festival, and a concert at the Utrecht Early Music Festival in summer 2026.
Intesa was formed in 2023 at the Royal Academy of Music. The ensemble’s name, an Italian word meaning “understanding” or “meeting of minds”, reflects the collaborative ethos at the heart of their work. Their programmes place folk and early music repertoire side by side, bringing together European and Armenian traditions through narrative and self-accompanied performance.
-
Lucine Musaelian is an Armenian-American viola da gamba player, singer, and composer from New Jersey. She graduated from Yale University in 2020 with a B.A. in Music, where she was a member of the Yale Schola Cantorum, Elm City Consort, the Opera Theatre Company of Yale, the Yale Collegium Musicum, the Smithsonian Consort of Viols. In July 2022, Lucine completed her M.A. in Historical Performance at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel, Switzerland, where she studied viola da gamba with Paolo Pandolfo and voice with Rosa Dominguez. She continued her viol studies with Jonathan Manson at the Royal Academy of Music, where she completed a Professional Diploma in Viola da Gamba Performance as a recipient of the Enlightenment Award. Lucine is now a Royal Academy Chamber Fellow with the duo Intesa.
Lucine has performed under the direction of celebrated conductors like René Jacobs, Lorenzo Ghielmi, Jane Glover, and John Butt. She recently performed with Jonathan Manson and Elizabeth Kenny as a part of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment’s Night Shift series, and also with Phantasm and Dunedin Consort. Lucine is a recent member of the Idrisi Ensemble, where she plays the vielle and sings medieval repertoire. As a part of her studies, she has been writing music for the viol and voice as a part of her continued exploration of self-accompanied singing with the viol. Her music takes inspiration from both Armenian folk and early music.
-
Nathan completed his Master’s degree at the Royal Academy of Music in 2023 as a Christopher Hogwood Scholar, specialising in historical performance on the viola da gamba and baroque cello with Jonathan Manson. During his time at the Academy, Nathan co-founded Intesa, a viola da gamba and voice duo which celebrates the combination of viol and voice across a wide range of repertoire. In 2023-24, he was a Chamber Music Fellow at the Academy as part of Intesa.
Since graduating, Nathan has worked with leading figures in the early music scene, including Philippe Herreweghe, Rachel Podger, Bjarte Eike, Michael Chance, Matthew Truscott and Pavlo Beznosiuk, as well as being accepted on the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment’s Experience scheme. Nathan recently joined the Salomon String Quartet, led by Simon Standage, for a series of concerts celebrating Haydn’s music at the Esterházy Castle in Hungary.
Nathan is also a core member of Bellot Ensemble, an early music group specialising in 16th and 17th-century repertoire. Bellot was selected as BBC Radio 3’s New Generation Baroque Ensemble 2025-27, and their debut album ‘Cupid’s Ground Bass’ will be released in November 2025.
Nathan has played with various leading period performance ensembles, including The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, The Hanover Band, and the Early Opera Company. He is the founder of the Vilalte Festival, a yearly chamber music festival taking place in southern France. The festival has been running for eight years and has put on over 35 concerts.