Performers
at our other concerts
Ruth Alford
Ruth Alford has established herself as a well-respected chamber musician and continuo-cellist with many ensembles and chamber groups in London. She graduated from Manchester University with an honours degree in music and the Proctor Gregg Performance Award, having studied with Bernard Gregor-Smith and the Lindsay Quartet. Further studies followed at the Royal Academy of Music, London with David Strange, the Amadeus Quartet, Sidney Griller, Jenny Ward-Clarke and William Pleeth. During this time she gained performing experience in a variety of musical genres ranging from solo classical recitals to jazz and music theatre.
Ruth still thrives on a diverse musical diet, from Baroque to Contemporary, as well as sharing her enthusiasm for music through various educational outlets. She performs and records throughout Europe, the Far East and America as a principal player and continuo-cellist with the English Baroque Soloists, Orchestre Revolutionaire et Romantique and Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, as well as chamber ensembles including Brandenburg Consort, The Music Collection, Fiori Musicali, Florilegium, Configure8 and The Revolutionary Drawing Room.
Rachel Brown
Recognised as one of the leading exponents of historical flutes, Rachel Brown is in great demand worldwide, as a soloist, orchestral player and teacher. Her recital discs of French Baroque Music and Quantz Sonatas established her reputation and her recording of virtuosic works by Schubert and Boehm on simple-system, ring-keyed and Boehm alto flutes has been described as 'a revelation' (Pan). Her championing of the works of the Berlin School has reawakened interest in the largely unknown masterpieces by Quantz and her recordings include Bach's B minor Suite twice. Her rendering of Handel’s chamber music has been described as 'perfection itself'. Her recordings of Bach Flute Sonatas and Mozart Flute Quartets are soon to be followed by a disc of Vivaldi Concertos and Arias.
Equally at home in the wind section, and described as 'a ray of sunshine over the orchestra' by the New York Times, Rachel has had a long and distinguished career as an orchestral playe,; first, on silver flute, with the orchestra of Kent Opera, and for many years as principal flute and recorder player with the Academy of Ancient Music, the Hanover Band, the Brandenburg Consort, Collegium Musicum 90 and Ex Cathedra, with whom she has recorded extensively and performed throughout Europe, North and South America, Japan, China and Australia.
With the London Handel Players, Rachel has immersed herself in the rich chamber repertoire, particularly Handel's Sonatas, Trio Sonatas and aria arrangements. Their performance at the Göttingen Handel Festival saw Rachel singled out: 'What was at once captured was the pure, silky smooth and wonderfully expressive flute sound of Rachel Brown.' (Göttinger Tageblatt)
A dedicated teacher and professor of historical flute at the Royal College of Music and Trinity Laban in London, Rachel has given masterclasses worldwide. She is author of The Early Flute, a practical guide (CUP) and has composed cadenzas for the new Bärenreiter edition of the Mozart Flute Concertos.
www.rachelbrownflute.com
Sam Brown
"The Eric Clapton of the lute", Sam Brown is amongst the leading cordophonists of his generation, known for his sensitive style. Originally a student of Sasha Levtov, he trained at the Royal College of Music with Jakob Lindberg and at the Conservatorio della Svizzera Italia.
Sam enjoys an international career that has taken him to major venues across Europe, including Wigmore Hall and Konzerthaus Wien, and to China and Kenya. He plays with a number of leading ensembles, and is especially known as an interpreter of lute song. His talks Music, Poetry and
the Jacobean Elite and Two Thoughts on Dowland's First Book have been widely discussed amongst lute enthusiasts.
Sam features on several CD releases from Voces8 Records, Erato and Claudio Records, including the premiere recording of a guitar concerto dedicated to him by Barry Mills. He has also played for theatre and appears on a number of TV and film releases.
Together with Laurence Williams, Sam directs Dowland Youth Works, a world-first lute-song residency aimed at teenagers. He is a deputy teacher at Junior Guildhall and teaches at University of Bath. He plays a seven-course lute passed on from Antony Rooley.
www.sambrownmusic.org
Adrian Butterfield
Adrian Butterfield is a violinist, director and conductor who specialises in performing music from 1600-1900 on period instruments. He is Musical Director of the Tilford Bach Festival and Associate Director of the London Handel Festival and regularly directs the London Handel Orchestra and London Handel Players as well as working as a guest soloist and director in Europe and North America. He has led The Revolutionary Drawing Room for 25 years.
He started playing string quartets at the age of seven at Pro Corda, a string chamber music course for children, and after 11 years as a student was a member of the coaching staff for over ten years.
Adrian's world premiere complete recordings of Leclair’s first two Books of violin sonatas were released in 2009 and 2013 on Naxos Records.
He is Professor of Baroque Violin at the Royal College of Music in London, gives masterclasses in Europe and North America and has taught at Dartington and Pro Corda Baroque. He also directs an annual baroque project with the Southbank Sinfonia.
He has conducted all the major choral works of Bach as well as numerous works by Handel and his contemporaries and directed ensembles such as the Croatian Baroque Ensemble in Zagreb, the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra and the London Mozart Players.
www.adrianbutterfield.com​
Toby Carr
Lutenist and guitarist Toby Carr studied the classical guitar at Trinity Laban, he was introduced to historical plucked instruments, an interest he pursued during a postgraduate degree at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, graduating in 2016 and welcomed back as a professor in 2021.
Now in demand as a soloist, chamber musician and continuo player, his playing has been described as 'sensuous and vivid' (The Guardian), 'Eloquent' (BBC Music Magazine) and 'Mesmerising' (Opera Today).
Toby has performed with most of the principal period instrument ensembles in the UK and beyond, as well as with many symphony orchestras, opera companies and ballet companies.
Paula Chateauneuf
Paula Chateauneuf’s playing has been described as "one of the most exciting things on the pre-classical concert circuit." A Fulbright Scholar to London, she soon established herself there as one of early music’s leading soloists and ensemble players and became the linchpin of numerous groups including the Gabrieli Consort, New London Consort and Sinfonye. She has also performed with the Academy of Ancient Music, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, His Majestys Sagbutts and Cornetts, Handel and Haydn Society, Avison Ensemble, The Instruments of Time and Truth, De Nederlandse Bachvereniging, and Jordi Savall's Le Concert des Nations.
Paula’s repertoire spans medieval music to the baroque, with particular expertise in early improvisation and the music of early 17th-century Italy. Her knowledge and skill in the art of basso continuo has made her one of the most sought-after accompanists in early music, resulting in fruitful collaborations with many leading singers including Catherine Bott, James Bowman, Michael Chance, and Mark Tucker. Her wealth of experience in early opera has led to involvement as both repetiteur and continuo player with the Bayerische Staatsoper, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Royal Opera House, English National Opera, Glyndebourne Festival Opera, and the Liceu Barcelona.
Paula has recorded extensively for Decca, EMI, Deutsche Grammophon, Linn, and Hyperion. She is the lute and continuo tutor at the Royal Northern College of Music, guest lectures in historical performance for the Royal Academy of Music.
Andrew Cowie
Andrew Cowie is currently a postgraduate at the Royal College of Music. He performs regularly on various instruments, including piano, historical keyboards, trombone and sackbut. Cowie has been an active performer on both the UK and European scene since starting his undergraduate studies in trombone at the Royal Academy of Music in London. While there, Cowie had the pleasure of working and growing as a keyboardist with artists such as Rachel Podger, James Baillieu, Margaret Faultless, Christian Gerharher, Eamonn Dougan, Lucy Crowe, Marie Vassiliou, Raymond Connell, Nick Mulroy, Liz Kenny, and Jeroen Berwaerts.
His new project 'Chantefable' with soprano Mariana Rodrigues, is an exciting blend of improvised music, poetry and song and has received international acclaim from audiences in the UK and abroad. Recent highlights include the reopening of the King's Gallery in Buckingham Palace, the London Händel Festival, and London Bach Society Singer's Prize on keyboard.
Cowie is a Parnassus Scholar, supported by the Charles Colt Scholarship, and is a recipient of the Help Musicians Ian Fleming Award.
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Timothy Dickinson
Bass-Baritone Timothy Dickinson enjoys a diverse career, ranging from recitals across the UK to Operatic roles at Glyndebourne, Scottish Opera, Longborough and elsewhere. Timothy is also very active as an Oratorio soloist, embracing a broad repertoire including Bach's Passions, the Requiems of Verdi, Faure and Duruflé, and Haydn's The Creation.
He has sung with ensembles including The Sixteen, Dunedin Consort, BBC Singers and La Nuova Musica. Additionally, he enjoys a deeply rewarding association with the education department of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, engaging with young people across the country.
In 2021, he released a disc of Christmas-themed English Songs: The Holy Boy: Christmastide in Albion with pianist Duncan Honeybourne. In 2023 he and Amy Carson founded The Echoing Air, a new ensemble based in the South West of England.
www.timothydickinson.com
Clemmie Franks
Clemmie Franks is a versatile singer who has built up a diverse and extensive range of experience performing and recording as a soloist and ensemble vocalist. One of only sixteen vocalists selected for the Pulse solo vocal ensemble led by Mary King at Southbank Centre in 2009,
Clemmie went on to gain a distinction in postgraduate studies at Trinity Laban. Since then, she has sung with London Voices, Audio Network, Britten Sinfonia Voices, London Early Opera, Dowland Works, The Telling and formed her own vocal trio, Voice, with whom she has toured
extensively over the last 14 years.
Collaborating across art forms, in theatre settings, and as a backing vocalist is also a passion, and Clemmie has worked with Clod ensemble, Gare St Lazare Players, Turner Prize winners Martin Creed and Laure Prouvost, poet Alice Oswald, Spiritualized, Bobby McFerrin, Bellowhead.
She loves the diversity of music her work allows her to explore: everything from the early notation of Saint Hildegard of Bingen and John Dowland to fresh off the press contemporary music, improvisation, and folk. She believes that music is what makes us human and should be for everyone!
www.voicetrio.co.uk/clemmie-franks
Peter Holman MBE
Peter Kenneth Holman MBE is an English conductor and musicologist best known for reviving the music of Purcell and his English contemporaries. Peter, with the ensemble The Parley of Instruments, made many of the extensive series of recordings of lesser-known English baroque music on Hyperion Records in that label's English Orpheus series from 1980 to 2010. The ensemble was co-founded in 1979 by Holman and the violinist Roy Goodman.
Peter also directs the vocal ensembles Psalmody and Seicento, and is Musical Director of Opera Restor’d. He has performed widely as a harpsichordist and organist. Peter is the founder and director of the much-acclaimed English Orpheus series on Hyperion records.
Peter Holman was a professor at the Royal Academy of Music for ten years, and has also taught at many conservatoires and universities in Britain, Europe, the USA and New Zealand. He is currently Reader in Historical Musicology at Leeds University. He is a regular broadcaster on BBC Radio 3, and is much in demand as a lecturer. Peter regularly contributes articles and reviews to a range of journals and has published many editions of early music.
Holman was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2015 New Year Honours for services to early music.
Gwendolen Martin
Gwendolen Martin studied music at Worcester College, Oxford (where she was a choral scholar) and went on to study singing at Trinity Laban. She now enjoys a career as a soloist and ensemble singer.
Recent highlights include Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas and Gluck's Orfeo ed Eurydice (The Grange Festival, Harry Christophers), Purcell's Indian Queen (Opéra Lille, Emmanuelle Haïm), Sweet Ayres of Arcadia recital with lutenist, Din Ghani (Brighton Early Music Festival and Corvedale
Festival), recitals for Handel House Talent (Handel and Hendrix in London), recitals with violinist, Maggie Faultless (Music for Awhile) and touring 'The Leaves Be Greene' with Chelys Consort of Viols at several of the UK's music festivals.
She has performed and recorded with The Monteverdi Choir, BBC Singers, The Sixteen, The Tallis Scholars, The Gabrieli Consort, Eric Whitacre Singers, Ensemble Plus Ultra, Oxford Bach Soloists, London Choral Sinfonia, La Nuova Musica, London Voices, The King’s Consort and The Marian
Consort. Gwendolen is passionate about music education and is a consultant for Southwark Music, training specialist music teachers in primary schools.
Peter McCarthy
"Aged 17, a double bass was accidentally delivered to my school. Well! finally an instrument you didn’t have to practise. While studying music at Leeds University (lured by the the prospect of studying composition with Alexander Goehr), I was sent to collect a “violone” for the department; that led to an enduring fascination with historical string basses. For twenty four years bass player of the English Concert, I still play for St. James’ Baroque and run Music in the Village [in Walthamstow], as well as London Viols."
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Peter McCarthy went to Leeds University to study music in 1973, taking double bass lessons in Huddersfield with Peter Leah. He was bass player for the English Concert for 24 years. In 2003, he volunteered to manage St James' Baroque, with whom he plays the violone, violone grosso and sometimes, bass viol.
credit: Paul Tucker
Sarah McMahon
Irish cellist Sarah McMahon moved to London in 1995, graduating with honours from the Royal Academy of Music in 2001. Sarah is passionate about chamber music and historical performance and enjoys a busy performing life as a founder member of the Callino String Quartet, as well as principal cellist with the Academy of Ancient Music and the Irish Baroque Orchestra. In addition she performs with the London Handel Players regularly invited to play as guest principal cellist with Dunedin Consort, Arcangelo, The English Concert, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, The Sixteen, London Contemporary Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Aurora Orchestra.
Sarah is professor of historical cello at the Royal College of Music in London.
Sarah gratefully acknowledges the support of the Arts Council of Ireland and Music Network through their capital awards scheme.
Nicholas Mulroy
Born in Liverpool, Nicholas read Languages at Cambridge University, and vocal studies at RAM. He has sung Monteverdi at New York's Carnegie Hall, Rameau at the Opéra de Paris, and Bach's Evangelist roles in venues such as the Sydney Opera House, the Royal Albert Hall (for the BBC Proms), and Leipzig's Thomaskirche.
Nicholas has enjoyed prolonged collaborations with some of the world's leading conductors and ensembles, and has appeared frequently at the Wigmore Hall, in a wide range of repertoire, including Purcell, Schubert, Bach's Passions (directing the St Matthew Passion), and Britten's complete Canticles on the centenary of the composer's birth. He has recorded widely, including a Gramophone Award-winning Messiah, several versions of Monteverdi's Vespers, and Piazzolla's extraordinary tango opera María de Buenos Aires. Alongside Elizabeth Kenny and Toby Carr, he recorded a programme of Latin American and European Baroque songs earlier in the year.
He is Associate Director of the Dunedin Consort, a Musician in Residence at Girton College, Cambridge, and a Visiting Professor at RAM. Away from musical life, he follows Liverpool FC and enjoys writing about art.
Lucine Musaelian
Lucine Musaelian is an Armenian-American viola da gamba player, singer, and composer from New Jersey. She graduated from Yale University in 2020 with a B.A. in Music, where she was a member of the Yale Schola Cantorum, Elm City Consort, the Opera Theatre Company of Yale, the Yale Collegium Musicum, the Smithsonian Consort of Viols. In July 2022, Lucine completed her M.A. in Historical Performance at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel, Switzerland, where she studied viola da gamba with Paolo Pandolfo and voice with Rosa Dominguez. She continued her viol studies with Jonathan Manson at the Royal Academy of Music, where she completed a Professional Diploma in Viola da Gamba Performance as a recipient of the Enlightenment Award. Lucine is now a Royal Academy Chamber Fellow with the duo Intesa.
Lucine has performed under the direction of celebrated conductors like René Jacobs, Lorenzo Ghielmi, Jane Glover, and John Butt. She recently performed with Jonathan Manson and Elizabeth Kenny as a part of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment's Night Shift series, and also with Phantasm and Dunedin Consort. Lucine is a recent member of the Idrisi Ensemble, where she plays the vielle and sings medieval repertoire. As a part of her studies, she has been writing music for the viol and voice as a part of her continued exploration of self-accompanied singing with the viol. Her music takes inspiration from both Armenian folk and early music.
Mariana Rodrigues
"Singing with a crystalline beauty that would tame any savage beast" (The Times), Portuguese soprano Mariana Rodrigues is currently in her second year of postgraduate studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London. She has won the Isabel Jay Memorial Prize, the Edna Bralesford
Vocal Prize and the RAM Regency Award. Rodrigues is a soloist for Academy Song Circle, Academy Voices, Resounding Shores and Bach in Leipzig, and is currently Soloist Fellow for the Oxford Bach Soloists and a Vache Baroque Young Artist.
Recent engagements include the solo soprano cantata Leo Scotiae irritatus by John Clerk and Purcell's Hail, bright Cecilia with the Dunedin Consort and Academy Baroque Soloists at Greyfriars Kirk in Edinburgh and Duke's Hall in London. Chantefable, her new project with
multi-instrumentalist Andrew Cowie, perform a blend of improvised music, spoken poetry and song, and concerts include Arcadian Nocturne at the Islington Festival with Sergio Bucheli, Lully's Ballet Royal de la Naissance de Vénus and Blow’s Venus and Adonis (Ariane and Cupid)
with The Queenes Chappell and Instant Collective for the Baroquestock Festival, and Handel's 'Apollo e Dafne' at the Angela Burgess Recital Hall. She has performed the roles of Tirésias, Serpetta, Clorinda, Despina, Cobweb and Nanetta for RAM Opera Scenes, and Damon (Rameau's Les Indes Galantes) for Muziektheatre Transparant De Singel with Korneel Bernolet in Antwerp.
Rodrigues holds a first class honours degree from the Royal Academy of Music and a bachelor's in Musicology from Universidade NOVA de Lisboa
Rachel Stott
Rachel’s career has been divided between performing wet ink manuscripts on modern instruments, interpreting faded manuscripts on period instruments, and creating entirely new manuscripts for both kinds of instruments. She is a long-standing member of the Bach Players and the Revolutionary Drawing Room, lively spontaneous ensembles which eshew the hazards of a sedentary lifestyle by performing on two feet. She also performs music from 18th-21st centuries with Trio Incantati, (recorder, viola d'amore and viola da gamba,) and early 19th century repertoire with Trio Notturno (flute, viola, guitar).
Rachel's compositions include four string quartets, song cycles to poems by Thomas Campion and Stevie Smith, and an opera for children, The Cuckoo Tree, based on the novel by Joan Aiken. Less conventional works include a tone poem, Odysseus in Ogygia, for six viola d'amore, Dark Arts in a Stony Place, an evocation of occult practices in a 16th century convent, for four trumpet marines, and Several World, a fugal piece for a hundred gleaming saxophones.
Aside from writing and performing music, Rachel enjoys walking, reading, baking and acquiring new skills. She has studied Ancient Greek in an adult education class and learned to pluck a goose in Western Canada.
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Aimée Taylor
Aimée studied for a diplôme d’exécution in modern flute performance at the École Normale de Musique de Paris, where she was a scholarship holder.
Aimée has won various awards throughout her studies, including the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra Young Artists Platform Award and, in Paris, a premier prix (Concours des Lyres et des Arts), in addition to the composer's prize, with congratulations, for her interpretation of an original piece. Aimée was awarded an Artist Diploma in historical performance (baroque flute) from the Royal College of Music (RCM), London, in 2023. This followed graduating, in summer 2022, from the RCM with a Master of Music, also in baroque flute, with distinction. During her studies at the RCM, she had entrance scholarships for both of her degrees and was an Irene Hanson scholar and a George Thornton Award-holder.
She is particularly passionate about baroque chamber and orchestral playing, and has performed with eminent ensembles, including with the Hanover Band, Dunedin Consort and joining Solomon's Knot for their tour of Germany and the UK. The performances on this project including venues such as the Stadtkirche St Peter und Paul, Weimar, at the Nikolaikirche, Leipzig, for the Bachfest Leipzig, and at the Wigmore Hall.
www.aimeetaylormusic.com
Tatty Theo
Tatty Theo comes from a family of cellists going back 3 generations. After reading music at The Queen’s College, Oxford, Tatty continued her studies at postgraduate level at the Royal College of Music, where she won many of the Early Music prizes. She has performed as a soloist at Festivals throughout Britain and Europe, with live broadcasts for BBC and various European radio stations.
A lifelong passion for Handel and a love of performing chamber music are two of Tatty’s driving forces and this was instrumental in her founding the award-winning period instrument group The Brook Street Band. As well as performing, Tatty writes for various publications about Handel and eighteenth-century music in general.
Tim Homfray of The Strad magazine, wrote of The Brook Street Band: “a riveting performance, which varied between affecting simplicity and visceral excitement...all the playing was high quality, but particular praise must go to the cellist Tatty Theo, the group's founder, for her beautifully subtle underpinning and shading of the melodic lines above.”
www.tattytheo.co.uk
Daniel Thomson
Originally from Melbourne, Australia, Daniel Thomson is a London based tenor soloist, recitalist and chamber singer. Known for his expressive text-based performance, Daniel’s focus is on historically informed performance of music from the 16th to 19th centuries.
Released in early 2018, Daniel's debut solo album Secret Fires of Love, has been featured on BBC Radio 3 programme In Tune with Daniel as a BBC Introducing Artist. It was reviewed by MusicWeb International, listing it as a disc "of the utmost importance ... This disc is the result
of much research of historical sources and deserves the attention of every performer ... Monteverdi's Si dolce è'l tormento is one of his most popular pieces, and has been recorded many times ... I am pretty sure that you will have never heard it the way it is sung here by Daniel
Thomson." Johan van Veen, www.musicweb-international.com - February 2019
Daniel is a core member of several groups including Lux Musicae London, InVocare, Sidonia Ensemble, Run and the priory choir of St Bartholomew-the-Great. He has performed as a soloist in various well-known festivals worldwide including the London Festival of Baroque Music,
Utrecht Festival Oude Muziek, Brighton Early Music Festival, Meer Stemmig Gent and the MA Festival Bruges. In 2019 Daniel also made his debut solo performance in Wigmore Hall alongside Dame Emma Kirkby for her 70th birthday celebration concert. In 2022 Daniel won the Salvat Beca Bach tenor prize in Barcelona, where he made his debut solo performance in the Palau de la Música Catalana.
www.daniel-thomson.com
Frederick Waxman
Frederick Waxman is a conductor and multi-instrumentalist from London. He completed an MMus in Performance at Guildhall School of Music & Drama, as well as further musical studies as a harpsichordist. Frederick performs music across a range of genres and has played on stages from the Wiener Musikverein and Opera Holland Park, to Latitude Festival.
In 2021, Frederick founded Figure in order to pursue his passion for historically-informed performance. Figure's inaugural concert, a performance of Bach's St John Passion at St Bartholomew the Great, was a sell-out. Frederick has led Figure in performances of Requiems by Fauré and Charpentier at Union Chapel, an immersive performance of Buxtehude's Membra Jesu Nostri at the Swiss Church in London, and in June 2022 he first brought Figure to Opera Holland Park with Handel's Serse, and returned there with Figure in June-July 2023 to conduct Mendelssohn's music for A Midsummer Night's Dream as the company staged Shakespeare's much-loved play with the composer's enchanting incidental score.
He is also Musical Director of the New Renaissance Collective, for whom he arranges and reworks Renaissance music.
Besides musical direction and performing, Frederick composes and arranges music for theatre and film.
www.continuoconnect.com/artists/musicians/frederick-waxman
