Lars Ulrik Mortensen has been active as a conductor for 25 years, and for almost 20 years he has worked exclusively with period instruments and original performance practice. He has toured most of the world and played with some of the most prominent international Early Music ensembles, including Holland Baroque Society, Irish Baroque Orchestra, Nederlandse Bachvereniging, and Collegium 1704. He has participated in many iconic recordings—released by Deutsche Grammophon/Archiv Produktion, ECM, EMI, Naxos and cpo.

In the early years, Mortensen studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Music and afterwards with Trevor Pinnock in London. Between 1996 and 1999, he was professor of harpsichord and performance practice at the Hochschule für Musik in Munich, and he continues to teach at prestigious institutions around the world, including Mozarteum Salzburg, Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, and The Juilliard School of Music in New York.

Mortensen has been the artistic director of Concerto Copenhagen since 1999 and is today the epitome of the orchestra’s artistic, creative, and cultural identity. In 2007, he received Denmark’s most prestigious music award, the Léonie Sonning Music Award, and since then he has continued to further develop and refine his artistic work.