Ab Oriente is a vocal chamber ensemble formed in January 2004 with the view to exploring music sung with single voice per part or for vocal consort. Where appropriate, Ab Oriente also collaborates with instrumental musicians. With every performance, Ab Oriente aims to understand the historical context in which each piece of music was composed, to make the music both entertaining and meaningful to the audience.

Since its formation, Ab Oriente has consistently searched for music that is stimulating and rarely performed in Singapore. Some significant milestones include the Asian première in May 2005 of excerpts from newly-discovered Swiss Baroque composer Berthold Hipp’s “Heliotropium Mysticum” from unpublished scores edited by Swiss musicologist Patrick Ötterli, and the Singapore première in May 2007 of madrigals from Nicholas Yonge’s Musica Transalpina, published in London 1588, from scores specially transcribed & edited by Ab Oriente for the performance. In 2010, Ab Oriente collaborated with chamber opera society Opera Studio and a group of actors in a staged interpretation of Orazio Vecchi’s madrigal comedy L’Amfiparnasso.

Ab Oriente is currently working with The Singapore Chapter of the American Guild of Organists on a concert in mid-2011 exploring French influence on English Sacred Music in the reign of the House of Stuart.