Artists
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Steven Devine, Music Director
Meet Steven Devine, The Cotswold Festival of Music Director, who enjoys a busy career as a music director and keyboard player working with some of the finest musicians. He made his London conducting debut in 2002 at the Royal Albert Hall and is now a regular performer there – including making his Proms directing debut in August 2007 with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. He has a love and flair for European Baroque, a style of music dating from 1600 to 1760 with the increasing range of instrumental complexity and the era when opera began. Steven will be on harpsichord with Robin Bigwood at An Evening at Cafe Zimmermann on 5 November 2021.
Kate Semmens, Soloist
Meet Kate Semmens, a soloist with many leading groups and opera companies, and has sung with some of the UK's finest choirs and consorts, including the Monteverdi Choir, Dunedin Consort, Gabrieli Consort and Eric Whitacre Singers. Kate was a soloist on Andrew Parrott’s recording of Taverner’s Western Wind Mass which won the gramophone award for Early Music in 2017, and performed Bach’s St John Passion with him at the St Petersburg festival. In opera, Kate has played many roles ranging from Mrs P in Michael Nyman’s The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, to Ottavia in Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea. In 2019, Kate was involved in the staging of James Runcie’s Great Passion, played the title role in Handel’s Il Pastor Fido for New Chamber Opera, the part of Dafne in Handel’s Apollo e Dafne with the Victoria Baroque Players in Canada and was also involved in education work singing with The Orchestra of Age of Enlightenment in education projects based on Purcell’s Fairy Queen. We cannot wait to hear her perform at CFoM2021.
Rebecca Afonwy-Jones, Alto
Following her Masters in Opera at The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Glasgow, Rebecca began her career at Scottish Opera, in the title role of Carmen. After making her Welsh National Opera debut as Countess Geschwitz in Lulu, notable highlights have included Flora La Traviata, Anna Kennedy Maria Stuarda at The Royal Opera House, Oman, Suzuki Madama Butterfly at Dubai Opera & for Festival Opera, New Zealand and Eine Kranke Moses und Aron at Royal Opera, Covent Garden. Other engagements include Wellgunde Das Rheingold for Longborough Festival Opera, Prince Orlofsky Die Fledermaus for West Green House Opera and the world premiere of Joseph Phibbs’ Juliana at Cheltenham Festival. Recent concert engagements include the British premiere of Mendelssohn’s realisation of Handel’s Israel in Egypt at The Three Choirs Festival, Elgar’s Sea Pictures at The North Wales International Music Festival, Dream of Gerontius for The RTÉ, Dublin, Beethoven Ninth Symphony, Mozart Requiem and De Falla El Sombrero De Tres Picos with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Rebecca has been Artist in Residence at Presteigne Festival and appeared in the world premiere of Oliver Tarney’s St. Mark Passion at St. Endellion Festival. She also enjoys a close partnership with the Norwegian Wind Ensemble, with whom she has sung Bach Weihnachtsoratorium, Mozart Requiem and recorded Handel’s Messiah, conducted by David Hill for Resonus Classics. Rebecca has also recorded a special commission by Judith Weir entitled Sleeping-Mat Ballad in response to the Hong Kong Occupation movement. Highlights in 19/20 season included Rosina Il Barbiere di Siviglia for Opera Project, JAM on The Marsh Virtual Festival recital broadcast with Anna Tilbrook and recording Hugh Wood’s Beginnings: Three Early Songs due for release in 2021. Future engagements include Lucretia The Rape of Lucretia at St. John’s, Waterloo, Haydn Stabat Mater at St Alban’s Cathedral, Kerstin Juliana for Resonus Classics, Dardano Amadigi for English Touring Opera and Malcolm Arnold Five Blake Songs at King’s Place.
Past Artists
Robin Bigwood, Harpsichordist
Robin is a harpsichordist, synth player, music technologist, and producer, whose work spans the classical, electronic, and pop fields.
As a classically-trained keyboard player, he works with many leading period instrument orchestras and ensembles, both as a harpsichord soloist and continuo player, and teaches at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire.
Robin will be joining our Music Director Steven Devine at our Bonfire Night Concert on 5 November 2021. He will be playing double harpsichord.
https://robinbigwood.co.uk/
Balladeste
New to the Cotswold Festival of Music is the unique sound and contemporary classical music of Balladeste, a beautiful and talented duo of musicians and composers. A collaboration between Preetha Narayanan (Violin) and Tara Franks (cello), the string duo, Balladeste, explores the versatility and sound potential of just two string instruments. With traces of contemporary minimalism, Indian classical, and folk, the duo co-creates original compositions that are vibrant and experimental yet melodic and filmic in quality – songs without words with a contemporary alt-folk twist.
Dame Emma Kirkby
Emma Kirkby feels lucky in many ways: that she met renaissance vocal polyphony while still at school, that she studied Classics and sang with the Schola Cantorum at Oxford, and, best of all, that there she encountered “historical” instruments known to Renaissance and Baroque composers, the lute, harpsichord, and wind and string instruments, whose sound and human scale drew from her an instinctive response. As a schoolteacher and amateur singer she was invited to perform professionally with pioneer groups; and long partnerships followed in Britain and abroad, with ensembles, individual players, and record companies, so that now Emma’s voice and style are recognised worldwide. Emma was awarded a DBE in 2007, and in 2011 the Queen’s Medal for Music. Amazed by all this, she is nevertheless glad of the recognition it implies, for a way of music-making that values ensemble, clarity and stillness above volume and display; above all she is delighted to see a new generation of singers and players bringing their skills to the endeavour.
Richard Boothby
Richard has been playing the viol eve since David Fallows handed him a tenor viol. He founded The Purcell Quartet in 1984 and co-founded Fretwork in 1985. He has helped to enrich the viol-consort repertory with new music from today’s composers, from Elvis Costello to George Benjamin. He is professor of Viola de Gamba at the Royal College in London.
Fretwork - the brilliant
English consort of Viols
Jamie Akers on Lute
A genre crossing musician who has had a wide range of performing experience. From intimate solo recitals to grand operas; film scores and pop festivals to concerts in prisons and hospitals all guided by his 'questing musicianship and refined technique'.
https://jamieakers.com/
Rachel Podger – the brilliant Baroque violinist
“Rachel Podger, the unsurpassed British glory of the baroque violin,” (The Times) has established herself as a leading interpreter of the Baroque and Classical. She was the first woman to be awarded the prestigious Royal Academy of Music/Kohn Foundation Bach Prize in October 2015, Gramophone Artist of the Year 2018, and the Ambassador for REMA’s Early Music Day 2020. A creative programmer, Rachel is the founder and Artistic Director of Brecon Baroque Festival and her ensemble Brecon Baroque. Rachel is Patron for The Continuo Foundation. A dedicated educator, she holds the Micaela Comberti Chair for Baroque Violin (founded in 2008) at the Royal Academy of Music and the Jane Hodge Foundation International Chair in Baroque Violin at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. Rachel has a relationship with The Juilliard School in New York where she visits regularly.
Stile Antico – World finest vocal ensemble
Stile Antico is one of the world’s finest vocal ensembles, renowned for vibrant and expressive performances of music from the Renaissance.
https://www.stileantico.co.uk/
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All funds raised will go to the Church of St Peter & St Paul, Northleach, Gloucestershire.