The Artists
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Michael Chance | Westminster Abbey Choir | St. James's Baroque Players | The Purcell Quartet | Sarband | English Voices | Northern Harmony | The Cardinall's Musick | The Gabrieli Consort and Players | I Fagiolini | Ensemble Organum | Russian Patriarchate Choir | Daniel Taylor | Fretwork | Alba | Anna Caterina Antonacci
Michael Chance, who is Artist in Residence at this season’s
Lufthansa Festival, has established a worldwide reputation as an
exponent of the male alto voice in all areas of the classical repertoire.
He is in equal demand as an opera, concert and recording artist.
After a degree in English at King’s College, Cambridge, where
he was a choral scholar, he did vocal training with Rupert Bruce
Lockhart. He has appeared at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden,
English National Opera, Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Sydney Opera
House, La Scala, Milan, and many other opera houses throughout the
world. He has recorded frequently with John Eliot Gardiner, and
has also collaborated with Trevor Pinnock, Franz Brueggen, Ton Koopman
and Nicholas McGegan. His belief in extending the countertenor repertoire
has prompted new work to be composed for him by Richard Rodney Bennett,
Alexander Goehr, Tan Dun, Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Judith Weir,
John Tavener and Elvis Costello.
Westminster Abbey Choir is principally responsible for the provision
of the highest-quality choral music for the daily offering of worship
in the Abbey. It also maintains a programme of concerts, recordings,
and radio and television broadcasts. In addition to its regular
visits to the USA, opportunities have arisen in recent years for
travel to Germany, France, Hungary, Russia, the Ukraine and Canada.
The adult singers, the Lay Vicars, are professional singers with
a great wealth of individual performing experience. The singing
boys hold scholarships at Westminster Abbey Choir School, which
remains the only school in the United Kingdom dedicated entirely
to the education of choristers. The 36 boys receive, in addition
to their vocal and instrumental education, tuition in a full range
of general academic subjects and sport.
St. James’s Baroque Players, formed by Ivor Bolton in 1984,
is one of the UK’s leading period-instrument ensembles. It
has been the resident orchestra of the Lufthansa Festival since
its foundation, has a regular association with the BBC Singers,
and performs at many international festivals in the UK and the Continent,
including four appearances at the Proms since 1993, and will make
its debut at the Montreux Festival in September. The group has made
several acclaimed recordings, including the complete Bach solo harpsichord
concertos (with Ivor Bolton), Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas and
a Charpentier CD featuring the Te Deum and Missa Assumpta est Maria.
The Purcell Quartet was founded in 1983. Throughout a huge range
of repertory they have established themselves as leaders in the
area of Baroque chamber music. Nor is their repertory limited by
size: in 1998, for instance, they staged an extensive tour of Japan
of Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea. Their international
tours have taken in the USA, Chile, Bolivia, Colombia, Peru, Turkey
and all the countries of Europe. At home in the United Kingdom they
have played for most of the major festivals, recorded extensively
for the BBC, and toured several times with the Early Music Network.
They have recorded over 30 CDs with a huge range of music –
Purcell, Corelli, Lawes, Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, Weckmann, Leclair,
Schütz and Biber have all had discs devoted to them. They have
recently recorded with Michael Chance an album of 17th-century German
music that will be released to coincide with this concert.
Sarband was founded by Vladimir Ivanoff in 1986. The name stems
from Persian and Arabic, and denotes an improvised coupling of two
parts within a musical suite. The group pursues an archaeology of
complex connections, endeavouring above all to show all possible
connections between European music, Islamic and Jewish music-culture,
and celebrating the symbiotic relationship between the Orient and
the Occident.
English Voices are a group of aspiring young soloists who also
enjoy working together in ensemble. They are equally at home singing
contemporary music and the early music repertoire. The choir has
performed at the London Bach Festival, as well as at other festivals
around the United Kingdom and abroad. They have worked with Gustav
Leonhardt in a programme of Bach cantatas broadcast by the BBC and
have appeared in other concerts on Radio 3 and Classic FM. They
have recorded Fauré’s Requiem with Ross Pople and the
London Festival Orchestra. The choir was originally formed from
former Cambridge choral exhibitioners who wished to continue to
sing together professionally. Their founder and conductor is Tim
Brown, Director of Music
at Clare College, Cambridge.
Northern Harmony, based in Vermont, USA, is
a shifting collaboration of singers specializing in harmony singing
from community traditions throughout the world. Formed in 1990,
the group has toured extensively throughout Europe and all across
the USA, and has recorded five albums of varied character. Its unusual
and arresting repertoire, wide command of diverse vocal styles,
and dynamic yet informal stage presence make the troupe transcend
the usual restrictive labels of ‘folk music’, ‘early
music’, or classical ‘choral music’. Northern Harmony
is part of a larger umbrella of community music activities which
includes the teenage ensemble Village Harmony and an extensive programme
of summer singing camps.
The Cardinall’s Musick, founded in 1989, is best known for
bringing neglected masterworks of the English Renaissance to a wider
public, but embraces a wide range of styles and periods, from a
complete reconstruction of a Mass at Hampton Court in the time of
Henry VIII to Palm-Sunday, a new piece written for the group by
Michael Finnissy. The singers are encouraged to perform in an open
and soloistic way, resulting in expressive, vibrant and moving interpretations.
There is an emphasis on academic excellence, and David Skinner,
musicologist and co-director, freshly edits the music from the original
materials. Recordings with ASV Records have included the festal
Masses and antiphons of Nicholas Ludford and the complete works
of Robert Fayrfax; the group is now embarked on the major project
of recording the works of William Byrd. The Gabrieli Consort and Players
The Gabrieli Consort and Players, founded in 1982 by Paul McCreesh,
specializes in the music of the Baroque era. The ensemble gained
critical acclaim in its first decade for mould-breaking reconstructions
of music for great historic events – particularly its best-selling
recording of A Venetian Coronation, 1595, released in 1990. Building
on this success, it has been a regular visitor to the major festivals
and concert halls of Europe and beyond, and has made numerous television
and radio appearances in a variety of repertoire. The Gabrieli Consort
and Players and Paul McCreesh now record exclusively with Deutsche
Grammophon Archiv and their releases have won several major European
prizes; their recording of Handel’s Solomon, featuring Andreas
Scholl, was voted Classic CD of the Year. Future projects include
the ensemble’s first move into fully staged opera in summer
2002.
I Fagiolini, after winning the Early Music Network’s Young
Artists’ Competition in 1989, earned a reputation as an entertaining
and innovative vocal ensemble. As well as working in Western Europe,
they have visited some of the most interesting cities on the globe,
often for the British Council: Cairo, Marrakesh, Hong Kong, Beijing,
Kiev, Tel Aviv, Cape Town, Soweto and a first trip to the USA in
1999. In 1997 they spent two weeks in Pretoria, Johannesburg and
Cape Town working with Soweto’s SDASA Chorale on a collaborative
album, Simunye. They have been active in collaborating with other
ensembles: solo-voice performances of Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers
with His Majesty’s Sagbutts and Cornetts, recordings of Byrd
with viol consorts Fretwork and Concordia, Purcell with Florilegium,
Schubert operas with the London Philharmonic Youth Orchestra, and
productions of Handel and Purcell with the Brook Street Band.
Ensemble Organum was founded by Marcel Pérès in 1982,
and has been based at the Foundation Royaumont near Paris since
1984. Its goal is to revive the vocal and instrumental art practised
at various periods of the Middle Ages. The ensemble’s repertoire
extends from the earliest sources known (Old-Roman, Gallican and
Carolingian chant) to the 15th century and beyond, and is composed
largely of music for the liturgy. Its approach is thoroughly historical
yet experimental. Each year efforts are focused on several specific
research programmes, run in conjunction with musicologists and historians
from France and abroad. A particular manuscript or
certain aspects of the repertory are studied in depth. Thus the
ensemble is constantly expanding its repertory in line with the
most recent historical and musicological discoveries. It also pays
particular attention to surviving oral traditions, to which it brings
a completely new approach.
Anatoly Grindenko, who graduated from Moscow Conservatory in 1974,
is well known in Russia as a viola da gamba soloist. He founded
the Russian Patriarchate Male Choir in 1983 in Trotse-Sergieva Lavra
(near Moscow). In 1985 the choir was reorganized to become the Russian
Patriarchate Choir. The ensemble is a highly professional team and
a real-life church choir. It is in effect a unique creative laboratory,
uniting musicological and practical activity, with the goal of restoring
ancient Russian music to a place in the church service. The choir
has recorded 13 CDs, full of innovative repertoire, and has performed
throughout Europe in concert and at major festivals.
Daniel Taylor was born in Canada, and is a graduate of McGill University
and the University of Montreal. In demand as a performer on both
sides of the Atlantic, he has taken operatic roles with Glyndebourne
Festival Opera, Rome Opera, Metropolitan Opera, L’Opéra
Montréal and at the Halle Handel Festival, and he has appeared
with such period ensembles as the Academy of Ancient Music, Les
Arts Florissants, Collegium Vocale Gent and the Monteverdi Choir
and Orchestra. His plans this season include appearances with New
York City Opera, San Francisco Opera, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra
and the Ensemble Orchestre de Paris.
Fretwork is a versatile consort of four, five or six viols, to
which voice, lute and organ may be added. They made their London
debut in 1986 and have since established themselves as both a leading
force in early music and an inspiration to contemporary composers.
Their repertory spans the entire English consort tradition as well
as works from 16th- and 17th-century Flanders, France, Germany,
Italy and Spain. They frequently collaborate with soprano or countertenor
(notably Catherine Bott and Michael Chance), and often perform verse
anthems with a four-part vocal group. Fretwork have been particularly
active in commissioning new works for viols; composers who have
written for them include George Benjamin, Michael Nyman, Thea Musgrave,
Gavin Bryars and Elvis Costello. As well as recording extensively
and touring throughout the world, they also publish both music and
books under the imprint of Fretwork Editions.
Alba is a duo formed in 1997 to explore the links between early
European vocal repertory and folksong traditions surviving to this
day in Britain and beyond. They have completed a successful Early
Music Network tour, performed all over Britain, and have given two
concerts in the USA.
Anna Caterina Antonacci, soprano
Anna Caterina Antonacci was born in Ferrara and graduated from
the Giovanni Battista Martini Conservatory of Bologna. She began
her brilliant career in 1987 by winning the Verdi competition at
Parma, and the following year the Maria Callas and Pavarotti International
competitions. An extraordinary vocal timbre and great acting skill
have enabled her to perform a large and varied body of work on the
world’s most important stages. Her repertoire ranges from Monteverdi,
Handel, Paisiello, Cimarosa to the music of the Italian bel canto.
She has made a speciality of Rossini roles, and German and French
chamber music of the 19th and 20th centuries. Her future engagements
include appearances at La Scala, Milan, the Ravenna Festival, Teatro
Massimo di Palermo, Bayerische Staatsoper, Théâtre
du Châtelet de Paris, Dallas Opera and the New National Theatre,
Tokyo.
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