EarlyMusicNews.Org

"Uncovering forgotten music and bringing it to life through her own performances is Lucie Skeaping’s skill and passion. She has performed and researched extensively into various areas of musical history, from the traditional music of the British Isles to the haunting ballads of the exiled Jews of Spain, from the musical skills of infamous royal mistresses of the past to the earthy street ballads collected by Samuel Pepys. Along the way she has explored music from Shakespeare’s theatre, the instruments dredged up from the wreck of Henry VIII’s ill-fated Mary Rose and the songs heard in the lowest dives of Charles Dickens’ London. " Visit website for more information.

Added on: Apr 04, 2008 | Hits: 396

"EMILY VAN EVERA has earned an international reputation for stylishly expressive singing in a variety of repertoires. Her many recordings include ground-breaking and award-winning performances of works by Monteverdi, Purcell, Vivaldi, Bach and Handel with the Taverner Players, music of Renaissance Italy, England and Spain with the Musicians of Swanne Alley, Circa 1500 and Musica Secreta, music by Rossi and Cavalli with Tragicomedia and Concerto Palatino and by Machaut and Hildegard of Bingen with Gothic Voices. She sang the role of Dido for the BBC’s acclaimed commemorative recording of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas (Taverner Players, re-issued by Sony), features on the Taverner Consort’s The Promise of Ages (“which Sony might safely have named ‘Quite Simply the Best Christmas Album Ever’” – BBC Music Magazine), and most recently released My Lady Rich, a portrait of Elizabethan gentlewoman Penelope Rich in music by Dowland, Byrd, Coprario and Tessier (see Reviews).

Stage and television appearances include productions of operatic works by Monteverdi, Lully, Charpentier and Handel, and a dramatised solo concert of early Tudor song for BBC2. Emily has broadcast from the BBC Proms and throughout Europe and North America in music ranging from folk ballads and trumpet arias to Haydn masses and songs by Charles Ives and Vaughan Williams. Born in northern Minnesota, she lives in Oxfordshire and travels in both continents for concerts. " Visit website for more information. (ed.)

Added on: Apr 20, 2008 | Hits: 398

"STEFANO TORELLI countertenor
Born in Parma (Italy)
Degree in classical Philology
Musicological studies in Cremona (School for Paleography and Philology) and Milan (Armenian musicology)

He studied organ and gambaviol. As a countertenor he attended several masterclasses with , Gloria Banditelli, James Griffett of Pro Cantione Antiqua , Evelyn Tubb and Poppy Holden of the Consort of Musicke, Claudio Cavina, Cristina Miatello and Sandro Naglia. Later his teacher was Anatoli Gusev in Milan. He studied the gregorian chant with G.Baroffio and the medioeval singing with Sequentia and Pedro Memelsdorff. He's specialising in Baroque singnig in Vicenza

He sings both in ensembles and as a soloist. He has recorded more yhan ten CDs, some focusing on Renaissance polyphony and some with the ensemble stirps jesse (Milan) on gregorian chant and medioeval polyphony. He also recorded a CD a soloist with gregorian chant from an unpublished codex and Italian arias (Donati, Pergolesi, Rossini). He took part in the first recording of Rognoni's Diminuzioni for gambaviol (Symphonia).

In 1996 he founded the male vocal quartett Quadrivium who performs a repertoire going from the Medieval Music to the Baroque. " Visit website for more information. (ed.)

Added on: May 25, 2008 | Hits: 399

"Born in Manchester, mezzo-soprano Clare Wilkinson read Classics with a Choral Scholarship at Trinity College, Cambridge. She subsequently took up a scholarship to study at Trinity College of Music, London, where she won the Early Music, Lieder, English Song and Oratorio/Cantata Prizes.

Now established as a soloist specialising in Renaissance and Baroque music, Clare is in demand with many distinguished conductors and ensembles. In particular, she has performed in many of the world’s major concert venues, from the Hong Kong Philharmonic to the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, with The English Baroque Soloists/Sir John Eliot Gardiner (including her recent debuts at the Royal Albert Hall singing Grandi and Rigatti, and the Royal Opera House singing Mozart). With Gardiner she has also sung Bach’s St Matthew Passion, Magnificat and Mass in B Minor around Europe, Handel’s Dixit Dominus in the USA and Purcell’s The Tempest in the Far East. " Visit website for more information. (ed.)

Added on: Mar 23, 2008 | Hits: 405

"The CHORUS OF THE BACH COLLEGIUM SAN DIEGO was founded in early 2003 by Ruben Valenzuela with the purpose of enriching the music offerings of San Diego by presenting historically informed performances of the music of the Renaissance, Baroque, and in particular the music of J.S. Bach. The chorus consists of the finest singers in San Diego, many of whom have longstanding experience with such ensembles and performers as Chanticleer, The Waverly Consort, The Philharmonia Chorale, American Bach Soloists, James Bowman, Julianne Baird, Los Angeles Baroque Orchestra, and Musica Angelica Baroque Orchestra." ...

Added on: Jan 26, 2008 | Hits: 406

"Peter Harvey arrived at Magdalen College, Oxford to study French and German, but soon afterwards changed course to music, with his love of languages always remaining at the heart of his singing, however. On leaving university he went on to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, during which time he won prizes in a number of international singing competitions, including the Walther Grüner International Lieder Competition, the English Song Award, and the Peter Pears Award.

Peter has made well over a hundred recordings in repertoire spanning eight centuries, with an emphasis on music from the High Baroque. Along with works by Handel and Purcell he has recorded all the major vocal works of J.S. Bach and many of the cantatas with conductors including Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Philippe Herreweghe and Paul McCreesh. A fluent French speaker, Peter has recorded a great many sacred works of the French Baroque (Campra, Gilles, Lully, Charpentier, Lalande) including Rameau's complete Grands Motets (with Le Concert Spirituel) and the secular cantatas for bass voice (with London Baroque, on BIS). From the twentieth century French repertoire he has recorded the Fauré Requiem twice with Michel Corboz, the latest version winning the "Choc de l'année" in Le Monde de la Musique, while as yet unreleased is a new version of the Duruflé Requiem with Magdalen College, Oxford. The Gabrieli Consort's new recording of Haydn's Creation, for Deutsche Grammophon, on which Peter sings "Adam" has recently been released to great acclaim.

Recent career highlights include Bach cantatas with Ton Koopman in Vienna's Musikverein, the B minor Mass in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Die Winterreise with Roger Vignoles in Cambridge and Spain, Messiah in Toronto, a tour to the Far East with the Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment in the St John Passion and the St. Matthew Passion with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, in Bernard Haitink's first performances of the work. " Visit website for more information. (ed.)

Added on: Apr 09, 2008 | Hits: 407

"Harmonia Vocal Quartet performs a wide range of music, with a repertoire that ranges from Gregorian chant and early polyphony to Baroque and classical works, madrigals, and contemporary sacred and liturgical music of merit. We are perhaps best known for our performance of Renaissance works by Palestrina, Lassus, Victoria, Tallis, and Byrd.

Formed in 2002, HVQ is based in Knoxville, Tenn., and has sung in Germany, Austria, New York, North Carolina, and throughout East Tennessee. Current members are soprano Maria Rist, mezzo-soprano Mary C. Weaver, tenor Keith Murray, and (depending on their availability) baritones Kenneth Parsons and David Ensley.

The quartet is available for weddings, concerts, special occasions, and religious services in Tennessee and surrounding states. " Visit website for more information. (ed.)

Added on: Aug 02, 2008 | Hits: 413

"Regarded for over two decades as one of the world's finest countertenors, Drew Minter grew up as a boy treble in the Washington Cathedral Choir of Men and Boys. He continued his education at Indiana University and the Musik Hochschule of Vienna. Minter has appeared in leading roles with the opera companies of Brussels, Toulouse, Boston, Washington, Santa Fe, Wolf Trap, Glimmerglass, and Nice, among others. A recognized specialist in the works of Handel, he performed frequently at the Handel festivals of Göttingen, Halle, Karlsruhe, Maryland. He has sung with many of the world's leading baroque orchestras, including Les Arts Florissants, the Handel and Haydn Society, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Freiburger Barockorchester, and as a guest at festivals such as Tanglewood, Ravinia, Regensburg, BAM's Next Wave, Edinburgh, Spoleto, and Boston Early Music; other orchestra credits include the Philadelphia Orchestra, the San Francisco Orchestra and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. Mr. Minter is a founding member of the Newberry Consort and sings and plays early harps regularly with TREFOIL, My Lord Chamberlain's Consort, ARTEK, and the Folger Consort. Mr. Minter has made over 50 recordings on Harmonia Mundi, Decca/London, Newport Classics, Hungaroton and others. He appears in two films as Tolomeo in Peter Sellars's "Giulio Cesare" and as the Devil in "In the Symphony of the World; a Portrait of Hildegard of Bingen". He writes regularly for Opera News.

Drew Minter is also a lauded stage director. He began as director of the operas at the Gottingen Handel Festival for five years, directing period baroque productions. Since then he has directed productions in many styles for the Opéra de Marseilles, Caramoor, the Boston Early Music Festival, Lake George Opera, the Orchestra of St. Luke's, Handel and Haydn, Boston's Opera Aperta, the Manhattan School of Music, Mannes School of Music, Boston University’s Opera Institute, Amherst Early Music, the Folger Shakespeare Theatre, the Five Colleges in Northampton, Tempesta di Mare and Cleveland's Apollo's Fire. This past year he was named artistic director of Boston Midsummer Opera, which presented its first season in August 2006.

In addition to numerous workshops in the vocal and dramatic performance of baroque music, Mr. Minter teaches voice at Vassar College, where he also directs the Vassar Opera Workshop and conducts the Vassar Madrigal Singers. He has taught since 1989 at the Amherst Early Music Institute. He sings between thirty and fifty concerts each season with a variety of early music groups. " Visit website for more information. (ed.)

Added on: Aug 05, 2008 | Hits: 419

“Formed in 1998 by its artistic director Laurence Brisset, the De Caelis Ensemble specialises in the performance of unaccompanied vocal works of the Middle Ages. The Ensemble’s passion for this little-known repertoire has resulted in a body of work that is based upon knowledge of original sources, of systems of notation and of the context of the works concerned. The quality of De Caelis’ original and lively performances is recognised not only by specialists but also by audiences in general.”

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Added on: Nov 13, 2011 | Hits: 421

“Collegium Vocale Gent was founded in 1970 on the initiative of Philippe Herreweghe. It was one of the first ensembles to use the then-new ideas about baroque practice in vocal music performances. Musicians such as Gustav Leonhardt, Ton Koopman and Nikolaus Harnoncourt immediately took an interest in the Flemish ensemble’s fresh, new approach, which led to intensive collaboration. In the mid-1980s the ensemble acquired international fame and was invited to all the major concert halls and music festivals of Europe, Israel, the United States, Russian, South America, Japan, Hong Kong and Australia. ..“ 

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Added on: Apr 20, 2009 | Hits: 422

"LA VENEXIANA is today the most important madrigal group actually in activity. In styling to the anonymous renassaince comedy from it’s named , LA VENEXIANA aims to incorporate into its musical interpretation the theatrically, attention to language in all of its subtlety, and exultation of contrasts between refined and popular, sacred and profane, that characterize our culture today.

Since the beginning of 1998 LA VENEXIANA collaborates only with the Spanish label GLOSSA. The first fruit of this new relationship, the Terzo libro di Madrigali by Sigismondo D’India, has won the prestigious Diapason D’Or of the French review Diapason. ... " Visit website for more information. (ed.)

Added on: Jul 12, 2008 | Hits: 425

"The Brabant Ensemble was founded in 1998 to explore the neglected repertory of sacred music in the period 1520-1560.

The group takes its name from the Duchy of Brabant, an area of the Low Countries that now forms part of the southern Netherlands and northern Belgium. Many of the greatest composers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries emanated from Brabant and its neighbouring areas, controlled at that time by the Dukes of Burgundy; it is the music of such composers as Nicolas Gombert, Orlande de Lassus and Josquin Desprez that forms the core of the group's repertoire." Visit website for more information. (ed.)

Added on: Jul 15, 2008 | Hits: 428

"The Capella Dvcale Venetia, musicians specializing in Renaissance music, conceived and directed by Livio Picotti, operating since 1992 in the city of Venice. ... " View website for more information. (ed.)

Added on: May 25, 2008 | Hits: 431

"She was born in Huesca, Spain. At the age of nine she began studying voice and piano at the Miguel Fleta School of Music. From there she went on to study voice at the Conservatorio del Liceu de Barcelona where she specialized in opera and received an honours diploma. Subsequently she transferred to the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel, where she studied with Dominique Vellard and Richard Levitt and began working as a soloist and chamber musician with various groups such as Gilles Binchois (medieval and renaissance music), Vox Suavis, (founded by her and Dominique Vellard, dedicated to traditional and medieval spanish music) and la Cecchina (baroque music). With these ensembles she has performed regularly at international festivals in Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland and the United States. She also has given introductory courses to the interpretation of old music at the conservatory of Huesca (Spain), in New Hampshire (USA) and at the Pigna University in Corsica. She has collaborated in several cd recordings with Gilles Binchois and la Cecchina."

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Added on: Apr 18, 2008 | Hits: 440

“Singer/whistler/performer Emily Eagen is a native of Cincinnati, Ohio, an alum of Macalester College and The University of Madison-Wisconsin, and a former Fulbright scholar to the Hague, the Netherlands. Emily currently lives and works in New York City. She is an active performer of early music, contemporary music, and traditional American music, as well as an avid experimenter in musical genres of all kinds.

Emily is a member of The M6, an ensemble dedicated to exploring and  performing  the works of composer Meredith Monk. She currently performs with the Hesperus Ensemble, singing Sephardic and renaissance music for a live-film performance of the 1920s horror film The Golem. Emily  has performed regularly as a soloist with the mediterranean medieval ensemble Sendebar, and was the 2008 recipient of the Barbara Thornton Memorial Scholarship for medieval music from Early Music America. She can be heard singing harmony on the recently released debut album by singer-songwriter Guillaume Goussault, and sings, whistles, and plays the ukulele with the roots/old-time/early blues band The Whistlin’ Wolves.

A two-time International Whistling Champion, Emily has been known to whistle everything from opera to jazz, and regularly leads workshops in group and solo whistling. In a 2007 Carnegie Hall workshop led by soprano Dawn Upshaw and composer Osvaldo Golijov, Emily premiered The Wane of More, a piece for voice, whistling, and chamber ensemble by composer Gyan Riley. Her whistling has been featured on numerous recordings, was used as live accompaniment to an installation by artist Tony Luensman at the Cincinnati Art Museum for Frank Duveneck’s painting “The Whistling Boy”, and was recently the whistling “voice” of e-bay.

Emily teaches private and group voice lessons in classical, early, contemporary, and traditional American folk genres. She teaches in and around New York City, as well as at various summer festivals including The Amherst Early Music Festival (CT) and The Augusta Heritage Center (WV). She teaches a monthly bluegrass/old-time/gospel harmony class at the Jalopy Theatre and School of Music in Brooklyn with singer Don Friedman, and is a teaching artist in the New York City public schools through Carnegie Hall.“

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Added on: May 04, 2010 | Hits: 440

"ARS ANTIQUA (Genoa, Italy) is a vocal and instrumental ensemble, specialized in music of the Early Middle Age, through Gregorian Chant, to Mediaeval and Humanistic music. We are interested in concerts, liturgies, and also seminars for students and colleagues. The director of Musicke is Guido Milanese. ... " Visit website for more information. (ed.)

Added on: May 18, 2008 | Hits: 445

"Linking professional and amateur countertenors and people interested in the CT repertoire" ...

Added on: Aug 03, 2007 | Hits: 451

"It was formed in 1997 and it is composed of variable singers with a prevalence of female voices which work trying to reach a vocal purity as near as possible to the interpretative standards of the medieval and Renaissance music. The study of the pure vocalism is characterized by the tonic peculiarity and consistency of the voices which transmit an accurate transparency and a sound useful to bring the essence of the prayer and the word of the sacred texts which are magnified by the ancient melodies to life again. The research is about musics from the codexes of Carolingian age, the medieval laud books and the ancient books of the medieval age, liturgical and not, with a particular reference to the Umbria and Toscana area. To strengthen the work of research and study the Association organizes seminars of Gregorian chant and ancient music with experts in this sector like Nino Albarosa, Giovanni Conti and Tito Molisani. ... " Visit webstie for more information. (ed.)

Added on: May 18, 2008 | Hits: 456

“NEW YORK POLYPHONY is gaining a reputation as the preeminent male classical vocal quartet in the fields of early and new music. Praised for a “rich, natural sound that’s larger and more complex than the sum of its parts” (National Public Radio), the four men deliver dynamic performances in a wide range of styles. From austere medieval melodies to cutting edge contemporary works, NYP balances refined musicianship with a uniquely modern sensibility.

Hailed as a “stunning tour through chant, polyphony and renaissance harmonies” (Minnesota Public Radio), their current CD Tudor City spent three weeks in the Top 10 of Billboard’s classical album chart. It has been featured on Danish Public Radio, American Public Radio and NPR’s All Things Considered.

NYP’s debut CD I sing the birth was released in 2007. The disc—an intimate meditation on the Christmas season—garnered unanimous praise. Gramophone Magazine named it “one of the season’s best”, BBC Music Magazine selected it as Editor’s Christmas Choice 2007, and Classic FM Magazine hailed it as “a disc for all seasons. …”

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Added on: Nov 09, 2011 | Hits: 461

“graindelavoix (grain of the voice) is an art-collective formed by björn schmelzer. since 1999 he is looking for musicians who want to experiment between performance and creation. the necessity of autoproductive and physical art keeps them together.

graindelavoix is fascinated by voices that stop communicating, that have no message anymore but rather are the pure expression of their underground: the gritty, intense and instinctive...

graindelavoix uses early music repertoires to find the undercurrent that illuminates our own times: a timeless spirit that stretches out to embrace an interval, a space.

what preoccupies graindelavoix in early music is the bond between notation and what eludes it: the higher consciousness and savoir-faire that the performer brings to a piece (ornamentation, improvisation, gestures...). to graindelavoix, singers are 'spiritual automata'...

material they work with includes ockeghem's polyphony, the plainte, machicotage, mediterrenean practices, late scholastic dynamics and kinematics, the affective body, gesture and image culture...

graindelavoix gives performances (concert/music theatre) that are the accumulated fragments of a wider work and research process: this site makes an attempt at framing.

graindelavoix is 'special guest' of “music-centre de bijloke in” ghent and has an artistical partnership with the “cultural centre of genk“. cd's are produced exclusively for glossamusic. ..“

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Added on: May 17, 2009 | Hits: 462

"La Trulla de Bozes was founded in 1998 by Carlos Sandúa to explore and perform the renaissance and early baroque Spanish polyphonic vocal repertoire.

After a first establishment period, in the year 2000 La Trulla de Bozes attracted the attention of the European environment specialized in early music when they obtained the first prize in the noted competition for ensembles of the XXXVII Festival Van Vlaanderen in Brugge. During the same year the group was named Revelation Ensemble after winning The International Young Artists Presentation/Early Music in Antwerp becoming the only Spanish group that have obtained these prizes.

The standard staff of the group is formed by five singers and one organist/harpsichordist. The group can increase the number of singers and instrumentalists according with the repertoire demands. All members of the ensemble are thoroughly familiarized with the performance practice of the early music, having worked individually with the finest groups specialised in this field, such as Les Arts Florissants (William Christie), La Capilla Reial de Catalunya (Jordi Savall), Ensemble Elyma, (Gabriel Garrido), Les musiciens du Louvre (Mark Minkovski), Al ayre español (Eduardo López-Banzo)… "

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Added on: Jul 15, 2008 | Hits: 465

"Hailed as "a golden soprano" by the New York Times, Jolle Greenleaf has established herself as a leading specialist in repertoire from the 17th and 18th centuries. She completed her Master’s degree at the Mannes College of Music, and soon after received the coveted Beebe Fellowship to study at The Royal Conservatory in The Hague, Netherlands. Upon returning to New York, Ms. Greenleaf has built a career performing with illustrious period instrument conductors such as Martin Gester, Bernard LaBadie, Ton Koopman, Andrew Parrott, John Scott, and Jeannette Sorrell. ... " Visit website for more information. (ed.)

Added on: Aug 06, 2008 | Hits: 470

"John Potter's musical collaborators include the composer Ambrose Field, video artist Michael Lynch and the lutenist Ariel Abramovich, as well as The Dowland Project, Red Byrd and the Gavin Bryars Ensemble. He is a member of the German ensemble The Sound & The Fury, and with fellow tenor Christopher O’Gorman is a part of the Hyperion/University of Southampton Conductus Project. A writer and scholar as well as a singer, he has published four books on singing and is a former British Library Edison Fellow. He is Reader Emeritus in Music at the University of York, having left the university in 2010 to focus on his portfolio of freelance activities.

John's eclectic performing experience has ranged from first performances of works by Berio, Stockhausen, James Dillon and Michael Finnissy to backing vocals for Manfred Mann, Mike Oldfield and The Who (among others). Red Byrd, the group he founded with bass Richard Wistreich, has recorded music as diverse as Monteverdi (both straight and with electric guitars), Leonin (3 albums for Hyperion) and the Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones (for Factory Records). He was a major contributor to the Hilliard Ensemble’s Officium project (for which he has five gold discs), and subsequently developed many of the ideas in The Dowland Project’s four albums for ECM; he also produced the first three ECM albums by the Scandinavian trio mediaeval.

Current projects include multimedia presentations of music by Ambrose Field (Being Dufay and its successor, both with films by Michael Lynch) and the Conductus Project (three albums for Hyperion with associated live performances also with films by Michael Lynch). His lute song repertoire ranges from Thomas Ford to Benedetto Ferrari and beyond, and includes programmes of Dowland and Campion. He also works with vihuela on the 15th/16th century ‘intabulation’ repertory, and with chitarrone on later music by Blow, Purcell and others."

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Added on: Apr 08, 2008 | Hits: 471

"Founded in the spring of 2005, Prometheus is a chamber ensemble dedicated to giving vibrant, historical performances of Baroque music. Unique because its members are equally entrenched in the scholarly and performance worlds, the group breathes life into Baroque music with its bold, sensitive interpretations of the repertoire.

The ensemble's concerts feature Baroque gesture and poetry, transforming them into unique visual and literary spectacles. " Visit website for more information. (ed.)

Added on: Aug 06, 2008 | Hits: 472

"I Cantori Gregoriani are a male voice group which exclusively dedicates itself to the study and the spread of Gregorian chant. Consisting entirely of specialists, the ensemble bases its own performances on research into semiology, that is the study of antique manuscripts dating from the Xth –X1th centuries. The performances of the group are aimed at transmitting, through the actual instruments of the semiology, the expressive force of Gregorian chant, i.e. the correct musical representation of the ancient exegetic tradition of the sacred texts. " Visit website for more information. (ed.)

Added on: May 18, 2008 | Hits: 480