Sue studied the trombone at the Royal College of Music, and shortly after graduating joined the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra where she remained for four and a half years. On returning to London she made the decision to direct much of her effort into research on the music and instruments of the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Her approach has been one of practical application and has brought her much acclaim in her field. She is Europe's leading exponent of the early trombone in its many forms. She has performed all over the world and recorded on compact disc and for television and film. She plays for the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, His Majestys Sagbutts and Cornetts, The Gabrieli Consort and Players and the Amsterdam-based Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century. She teaches at the Royal College of Music, at the Royal Academy (who awarded her the Hon.R.A.M.) and the Royal Northern College of Music.
Lisa is internationally recognized as one of the leading performers on early flutes. She has appeared many times as soloist and orchestral principal throughout Europe, the USA, Japan and Australia, and has recorded a wide range of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century music. Born in England of Ukrainian-Irish parents, she has performed and recorded with all the leading British period-instrument orchestras under conductors including Trevor Pinnock, Frans Bruggen, Simon Rattle, Charles Mackerras, John Eliot Gardiner, Roger Norrington and Christopher Hogwood. Lisa's solo recordings include the acclaimed Vivaldi Op. 10 concertos, several versions of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 and the Suite in B minor, and Mozart's G major and Flute and Harp concertos. Following her recording of the complete Handel flute sonatas for Hyperion she will be recording all Bach's flute sonatas during the next year, also for Hyperion. Solo and chamber appearances this year have included concertos in Brazil, Argentina, Spain and the USA. Lisa's reputation as a teacher brings her students from all over the world. As well as teaching for CEMPR she is a professor at the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal College of Music in London, and The Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester.
Paula arrived in London in 1982 as an American Fulbright Scholar and has established herself as one of early music's leading lute and early guitar players. Her interest in improvisation, dance music and continuo playing as well as solo repertoire has led to a busy career in music of diverse styles spanning many centuries. She performs with several of the finest early music ensembles, including the New London Consort, the Gabrieli Consort, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the Academy of Ancient Music. She is sought after as a chamber musician, particularly for early seventeenth-century monody, and as a continuo player for early opera, in which role she has been involved in productions with the Royal Opera House, English National Opera, Kent Opera, Glyndebourne, the Bavarian State Opera and the opera houses of Stuttgart and Hanover. Paula's extensive discography includes recordings for Decca, EMI, Deutsche Grammophon, Hyperion and Virgin Classics. She has recently recorded with Catherine Bott a CD of songs by Barbara Strozzi for which she researched and edited the music. Recent concerts and recordings have taken her to Spain, Italy, Belgium, France, Holland, Germany and the USA. She plays regularly in the early music festivals at Bruges, Utrecht, Birmingham and York.
Alison is one of the best known British exponents of the viol. As teacher, performer, and moving spirit behind several well-known groups, she travels all over the world giving recitals and lectures, and teaching at summer schools and workshops. She bought her first viol while reading music at Reading University, and went on to study the instrument in Brussels with Wieland Kuijken and, later, with Jordi Savall in Basel. She has now made over seventy recordings with many early music groups, notably the Consort of Musicke, the Dowland Consort, Musica Antiqua of London, and the Rose Consort of Viols, and she features as a soloist on two discs of Marais on the Naxos label. She is President of the Viola da Gamba Society of Great Britain, and Professor of Viol at Trinity College of Music in London. She directs many courses for viol players, including the International Viol Summer School, attracting players from all over the world, and her book Play the Viol - now in its third reprint - is published by Oxford University Press. Alison has a world-wide reputation for her teaching skills and teaches in Germany, Belgium and Italy as well as in the UK.
Kati is one of the rising stars among Baroque string players. She was born in Transylvania, but emigrated to Israel at the age of fifteen and completed her violin studies there with Ora Shiram at the Tel-Aviv Rubin Academy of Music. She subsequently completed a Master's degree with distinction at the Royal College of Music, London, where she studied Baroque violin with Catherine Mackintosh. While in Israel Kati was leader of the Jerusalem Baroque Orchestra and a member of the Jerusalem Consort, performing extensively in and outside Israel and recording two CDs for the Belgian label EAS. Since moving to England she has become a regular member of the English Concert, The English Baroque Soloists, and the Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique. As principal second violin with the King's Consort she has performed in the UK, the USA and Mexico. She also freelances with the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and is currently participating as one of the leaders of the English Baroque Soloists in John Eliot Gardiner's 'Bach 2000' project. Kati is also a keen chamber musician. She is a founding member of the Accademia Daniel, with which she has recorded for Stradivarius and CPO, and of the British-based group Ricordo. She also plays regularly with the British group La Serenissima which specialises in the music of Vivaldi and scored a notable success with them at the recent Early Music Showcase in Birmingham. Apart from coaching Baroque strings at Birmingham she teaches at the annual early music course in Jerusalem and has been invited to teach Baroque violin at the Early Music Academy '99 at Szombathely, Hungary.
Vivien is well-known for her performances and recordings of early music. She developed as a singer with Stevie Wishart's medieval-contemporary ensemble Sinfonye, which she joined in 1989 and with which she tours extensively in the UK and abroad, recording via Hyperion, Documentos Sonoros and Celestial Harmonies. With the early music group The Dufay Collective she has recorded two discs with Chandos and has made a number of overseas tours, including visits to Istanbul, Colombia, Singapore, Australia, Canada, the USA, Morocco and Spain. Listening to traditional singers has been a major inspiration, and her research into the roots of European singing has taken her to Bulgaria, France, Spain and Corsica. A versatile performer, Vivien also works in contemporary, folk and free improvised music, dance-theatre and jazz, singing, for example, with a big band led by jazz composer-pianist Keith Tippett, and in Alba, a folk-medieval duo with fiddle player Giles Lewin. Vivien is an experienced teacher and has taught in vocal workshops all over the world and gives week-long medieval music workshops with the Dufay Collective at the Dartington International Summer School.
Walter was born in England. After graduating from the Royal Academy of Music in London, he continued his studies under Ramy Shevelov in Tel Aviv, and then under Sandor Vegh in Germany. His love for the music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries brought him to the study of ‘authentic’performance practice on period instruments, and this has been his passion for the last twelve years. He has led, directed, and appeared as soloist with the Orchestra Barocca Italiana in Rome, the Ensemble Baroque de Limoges France, and Keshet Baroque Orchestra in Israel. He has led Les Arts Florissants (dir. William Christie), the Netherlands Bach Society under Ton Koopman, René Jacobs and others, The Hanover Band, The Sixteen, the Gabrieli Consort, and The King's Consort. He has worked with Gustave Leonhardt and John Eliot Gardiner and since 1989 he has led the second violins in The English Concert (dir. Trevor Pinnock), with whom he has toured and recorded extensively, and appeared as a soloist. Walter has played many solo recitals in France, Israel, England and Canada, recorded by Radio France and Israel Radio. His repertoire extends from seventeenth- century Italian and German sonatas, including the Rosary Sonatas of Biber, to the Sonatas and Partitas of Bach, and much French music. He has recorded the Récréations of Leclair for Addes, France, sonatas by Mondonville for Meridian and the Biber Rosary Sonatas and a group of Vivaldi sonatas for Signum. Walter teaches regularly in Israel and has given masterclasses in France, Rome and Canada. He has conducted the Kashtaniot Chamber Orchestra in Tel Aviv, and recently returned from an intensive month of conducting at the University of Alberta, Canada. He is also the director of Linden Baroque, an orchestra of baroque enthusiasts from all walks of life.
Richard is one of Britain's more versatile musicians, having a repertoire that covers five centuries - from the Renaissance to the present day - and employing a number of different instruments. He has played as principal 'cellist for most of Britain's best-known period-instrument orchestras and is now much in demand as a continuo player: one of his most recent appearances in this role was as accompanist to Cecilia Bartoli in a programme of early music at Birmingham's Symphony Hall. At the invitation of Sir Simon Rattle he played in Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte at Glyndebourne, the latter being recorded by EMI, and, most recently, in Rameau's Les Boréades at the 1999 Salzburg Festival (where he partnered Emmanuelle Halm). He has also performed and recorded a vast range of instrumental music. With Convivium (formerly the Locatelli Trio) he has travelled widely, performing as soloist on both 'cello and viola da gamba, and is continuing to make a series of recordings. In 1992 he co-founded the Beethoven String Trio of London, who have recently recorded a number of works by the late Buxton Orr (whose string trio was written for them).
Jeremy took his first steps on the cornett while a student at Durham University in 1974, where he was inspired and encouraged by the late Jerome Roche. Following that he studied with Philip Pickett at the Guildhall School of Music, London, and has made his living as a professional cornett player ever since. He is group manager of the renowned and pioneering ensemble His Majestys Sagbutts and Cornetts and is Principal Wind Player with the Gabrieli Consort and Players for their earlier repertoire. He also performs and records regularly with many of Europe's other leading early Baroque ensembles. Jeremy has more than 30 major recordings to his credit, including Il Cornetto (1989) which was the first solo CD for his instrument. He has appeared in settings ranging from London's Albert Hall and the Sydney Opera House to St. Mark's Venice, the Orient Express and, on one occasion, a Polish salt mine. En route he has taken in Europe's major music festivals, numerous provincial concert halls, and a variety of churches, cathedrals and palaces. In addition to a playing career which has taken him to more than 20 countries throughout the world, Jeremy has been director of Christopher Monk Instruments since 1991. The business - a partnership with craftsman Keith Rogers - is devoted to the research, development and world-wide distribution of all the instruments of the cornett and serpent families. Additionally, in close collaboration with Dick Earle, the workshops produce a successful range of baroque oboes and, most recently, three-hole pipes copied from the Mary Rose instruments. Jeremy West is also an active cornett teacher. He is Professor of Cornett at the Royal College of Music, London, Consultant to the London Royal Academy of Music as well as the Centre for Early Music at the University of Birmingham; he teaches on courses and workshops in Britain, Germany and Switzerland; and he has a number of private pupils. In 1995 he wrote and published How to play the Cornett, the first modern comprehensive tutor for cornett players of all levels.
