JSB-Ensemble Oslo was founded in 2019 by the conductor Julia Selina Blank and the baritone Halvor F. Melien. The ensemble creates projects that bring the old and the new together: programmes in which Renaissance and Baroque music can stand alongside modernist contemporary music by composers such as Luciano Berio, Salvatore Sciarrino, Gérard Grisey and Kaija Saariaho. The programmes are usually performed one voice to a part.
The ensemble is made up of stylistically versatile singers and baroque instrumentalists who are among Norway's leading ensemble singers and soloists. Within a single concert the singers move between solo and ensemble singing, and between the precision demanded by contemporary music and the freedom a solo movement needs.
Both Gérard Grisey's Les Chants de l'Amour for twelve singers and electronics and Salvatore Sciarrino's 12 Madrigali received their Norwegian premiere from the ensemble. It has also performed music by Vittoria/Raffaella Aleotti, Maddalena Casulana and other rarely performed Renaissance and Baroque composers, and has staged Hugo Distler's Totentanz. The ensemble has appeared at the Oslo Chamber Music Festival, Nordland Musikkfestuke, the Bodø International Organ Festival and Bergen Kirkeautunnale.
Julia Selina Blank is regularly engaged as a guest conductor and chorus master with ensembles such as the Rundfunkchor Berlin, the Groot Omroepkoor and the MDR-Rundfunkchor, and directs Kammerkoret NOVA in Oslo. Originally from Germany, she is based in Norway. She received second prize at the Eric Ericson Award in 2021 and won first prize at the World Choral Conducting Competition in Hong Kong in 2019.
Halvor F. Melien is a concert singer who performs throughout Europe, with a repertoire from sixteenth-century music to new works. He has sung with ensembles such as Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Les Talens Lyriques and Oslo Sinfonietta, and has given the first performances of works written for him by Ørjan Matre, Lisa Streich and Eivind Buene.
The size of the ensemble varies from project to project. These singers form the core of its line-up.
Ditte Marie Bræin is a soprano who sings baroque and contemporary music as a soloist and ensemble singer. Since autumn 2025 she has been a member of Trio Mediæval, and she has been a member of the Norwegian Soloists' Choir since 2012. Of Norwegian and Danish origin, she comes from one of Norway's oldest families of musicians and trained at the Norwegian Academy of Music. She holds a work grant from Arts Council Norway for 2025–2027.
Mari Askvik is a mezzo-soprano. She has sung with Opera North and the Norwegian National Opera & Ballet, and has performed Bach with Les Talens Lyriques and Christophe Rousset. She comes from Aurland in Sogn, western Norway, and the folk music she grew up with has shaped her musicianship. She often includes Norwegian folk tunes, especially hymns, in her concerts – frequently alongside baroque music. She studied at the Grieg Academy and the Norwegian Academy of Music and holds a master's degree from the Norwegian National Academy of Opera.
William Wallace is a British tenor based in Norway. He sings baroque and contemporary opera and oratorio, not least as the Evangelist in Bach's Passions, and has appeared at Wigmore Hall, the Royal Albert Hall and Glyndebourne. He studied at the Royal College of Music and the National Opera Studio in London, and has won the London Handel Singing Competition.
