EarlyMusicNews.Org

"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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Category: Ensembles/Performers/Associations/Societies / Voice

Added on: Apr 08, 2008 | Hits: 468