Sophie Barber studied at Wells Cathedral School and Chetham’s School; at the age of 16 she went to the Royal Northern College of Music, and followed this with postgraduate study at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. In 1986 she was a founder member of the Barbican Piano Trio, with whom she performed around the world. In the 1990s she was a member of both the Academy of St Martin in the Fields and the City of London Sinfonia. More recently she has studied the baroque violin and pursues a career with historically informed groups. She plays regularly with Florilegium, the Irish Baroque Orchestra, The English Concert, and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique.
Elizabeth Bradley represented Scotland as a finalist in the Shell/LSO scholarship competition while studying at the Royal Northern College of Music. She particularly enjoys performing chamber music and performs with groups such as Configure 8 (of which she is a founder member), The Bach Players, Florilegium, the Barbican Trio, and Lontano. She has performed regularly with many world-class orchestras including the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Elizabeth holds the position of Double Bass teacher at Trinity Junior College of Music and recently completed a Master of Music, Ethnomusicology at SOAS, London.
Sally Bruce-Payne was born in London, living first in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey, where her father was an organist and choir master. (Later they lived opposite St John’s Downshire Hill.) She began her musical studies as a cellist, switching to singing at the Royal College of Music, London. Sally enjoys a career that has taken her all over the world, working with conductors such as Sir Neville Mariner, Sir David Willcocks, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Phillippe Herreweghe, and Nicholas McGegan. Her recordings as soloist include the Schubert Mass in A flat, the Theresien and Nelson Masses of Haydn, Lili Boulanger’s ‘Du fond de l’abîme’ (all with Gardiner), and Pierre Boulez’s ‘Le Marteau sans maître’ (Cheltenham Festival, Radio 3). This year she will record Handel cantatas with the Brook Street Band, and perform in a Vivaldi opera in Venice. She now lives with her husband and three young children in Surrey.
James Eastaway has played the oboe since the age of 11, but only seriously considered a career in music after taking up the baroque oboe while studying medicine at Edinburgh University. He has played with most of the British period instrument orchestras, and also groups such as the Orchestre Champs Élysées, Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, and the Australian Chamber Orchestra, in repertoire ranging from Purcell to Wagner. James has worked most regularly with the English Baroque Soloists, Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and London Handel Orchestra. As a soloist he has performed, broadcast and recorded concertos and chamber music. He is Professor of Baroque and Classical Oboes at Trinity College, London, and has also taught for the Académies Musicales de Saintes. Alongside his concert schedule he continues to work as a doctor and also as an actor with the performance group Theatre PUR.
Rachel Elliott studied piano at the Purcell School, before going to Selwyn College, Cambridge, to read music. She then spent two years on the post-graduate Early Music course at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where her singing teacher was David Pollard. Her career has been divided between solo and ensemble singing. She has worked with English groups such as I Fagiolini, Concordia, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the Academy of Ancient Music, and the New London Consort. She has also sung with the French ensembles, Les Arts Florissants and Il Seminario Musicale, and works regularly with the Spanish group Hippocampus. Her recordings include lute songs by Campion with Nigel North, discs of music by Purcell, Charpentier and Rameau with New Chamber Opera, music for voice and viol consort by Gibbons with Concordia, as well as a disc of Vivaldi motets for solo soprano. Most recently she has recorded a recital of music by Monteverdi, Frescobaldi, and Caccini for the Spanish label Arsis.
Kinga Gáborjáni studied music in her native Budapest before coming to London for postgraduate work at the Royal Academy of Music, where she studied baroque cello with Jennifer Ward Clarke and the viola da gamba with Richard Campbell. Since then she has played with leading orchestras, including the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, the Gabrieli Consort, The English Concert, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and the English Baroque Soloists. She also plays chamber music with Triologue, the Four Temperaments, and other groups. Last year she played with the English Baroque Soloists on their recording of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos for the SDG label.
Rachel Isserlis was born in London and grew up playing chamber music. She has played in various European ensembles for concerts and recordings worldwide, and is a regular visitor to the International Musicians Seminar in Prussia Cove. She is a member of Divertimenti of London, with whom she has made several recordings on the Hyperion Label. Rachel also specializes in early instruments: she recorded the Locatelli Trio Sonatas with Elizabeth Wallfisch and appeared on the BBC Early Music Show. She has worked with the English Concert, the Academy of Ancient Music, the English Baroque Soloists, and the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra. A founder member of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, she plays repertoire from Purcell to Wagner, and took part in the first performance of Heiner Goebbels’s ‘Songs of wars I have seen’ in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London.
Catherine Latham studied recorder and baroque oboe at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, and trained orchestrally with the European Union Baroque Orchestra. She is a regular member of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the English Baroque Soloists, and The Bach Players. Catherine teaches recorder in the Early Music department of Birmingham University, and runs her own teaching practice. Recently she has enjoyed playing shawms and recorders in Shakespeare productions at the Globe Theatre, and in a production of St Joan at the National Theatre in London.
Jakob Lindberg, born in Djursholm in Sweden, developed his interest in music through the Beatles. He started to play the guitar, then soon became interested in the classical repertoire. After reading music at Stockholm University, he came to the Royal College of Music in London, studying with Diana Poulton. He is now one of the most prolific performers on lute and related instruments. As a continuo player he has worked with the leading English ensembles. As an accompanist he has played and recorded with Emma Kirkby, Ann Sofie von Otter, Nigel Rogers, and Ian Partridge. He has given solo lute recitals all over the world. He teaches at the Royal College of Music, London, where he succeeded Diana Poulton as professor of lute. His many recordings (especially for the BIS label) include the complete solo lute music by John Dowland and by J.S. Bach.
Alison McGillivray studied cello at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, and at the Royal Academy of Music, London. Based in London since 1994, her career has focused on period instrument performance. She is the principal cellist with The English Concert, The Early Opera Company, and Concerto Caledonia, and plays viola da gamba with the viol consort Concordia. With the Academy of Ancient Music she has performed concertos by C.P.E. Bach, Haydn and Vivaldi. Her recording of Geminiani’s sonatas for cello is on Linn Records. Alison teaches baroque cello at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
Alastair Mitchell has played with all the leading early music ensembles since leaving the Guildhall School of Music, London, in 1976. He has been the principal bassoonist in the English Concert, the London Classical Players, and the English Baroque Soloists. At present he plays with, among others, the Academy of Ancient Music and the Gabrieli Consort, and has recently been diversifying into antiques (as he becomes one himself!), specializing in the sale of books, maps, and prints.
Marion Moonen studied flute at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague with Paul Verhey and Frans Vester, and Baroque flute with Wilbert Hazelzet. She is a member of various ensembles and orchestras, including the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, the Kleine Konzert of the Rheinische Kantorei with Hermann Max, the Van Swieten Society, and Concerto d’Amsterdam. Since the formation of the ensemble Musica ad Rhenum she has performed and recorded much of the repertoire for two Baroque flutes with flautist Jed Wentz. With Wilbert Hazelzet she has recorded sonatas for two flutes by W.F. Bach, and trios and quartets of the Classical repertoire by among others Joseph Haydn and J.C. Bach. In 2007 the CD Madame d’Amours was released by the Attaignant Consort, with which she plays Renaissance flute.
Nicolette Moonen studied the baroque violin with Jaap Schröder at the Conservatorium in Amsterdam and with Sigiswald Kuyken at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague. She has played with most of the major baroque orchestras in continental Europe and in the UK, and has been invited to lead ensembles such as Collegium Vocale Gent, La Chapelle Royale, Ex Cathedra, the European Union Baroque Orchestra, and English Touring Opera. She is a member of the English Baroque Soloists and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, teaches at the Royal Academy of Music in London and Dartington International Summer School, and runs The Bach Players. As well as violin, she enjoys playing the viola and the viola d’amore.
Nicholas Mulroy studied at Clare College, Cambridge, and then at the Royal Academy of Music, London. A versatile musician, his repertoire stretches from Monteverdi and Purcell to Jean Joubert and Judith Weir, and covers opera, oratorio, and song recital. He is a regular performer with the English Baroque Soloists, Ex Cathedra, I Fagiolini, and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Recent work includes a recording of the role of Evangelist in Bach’s St Matthew Passion (Linn Records) and a concert performance of the zarzuela Briseida in the Festival Santiago de Compostela.
Rodolfo Richter trained as a modern violinist with Klaus Wusthoff and Pinchas Zuckermann, and studied composition with Hans Joachim Koellreutter and Pierre Boulez. He studied baroque violin with Monica Huggett at the Royal Academy of Music and has performed with most of Britain’s leading period ensembles. He has collaborated regularly in concerts and recordings with Sonnerie, Hausmusik, and Florilegium, and he has been invited to lead many orchestras, including the Hanover Band, St James Baroque, the Academy of Ancient Music, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and The English Concert. He has recorded Vivaldi solo concertos for Opus 111 and made the first recording of the complete sonatas of Erlebach for Linn Records.
Silas Standage was a chorister at St Paul’s Cathedral (he sang for the wedding of Charles and Diana as well as being part of a real boy band of trebles called ‘Too short’!) During his teens his flare for composing and arranging music flourished. While at Cambridge University he directed performances of Purcell’s Fairy Queen for the Opera Society, as well as a series of concerts with students playing on historical instruments. He went on to study the harpsichord at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, and the Conservatoire Royale, Brussels. Since then he has played for all the major British early music groups and since 1999 has been principal continuo player for Sir John Eliot Gardiner, performing as a soloist in the Bach Cantata Pilgrimage in 2000. Silas is passionate about seventeenth-century music and is writing a PhD on the repertoire of Charles II’s violin band.
Rachel Stott is a performing musician and composer. She played for a number of years with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, London Classical Players, and other period instrument orchestras, while also exploring new music with Opus 20 String Ensemble, Music Projects of London and the New Music Players, of which she was a founder member. She is the viola player of the Revolutionary Drawing Room, with whom she has performed throughout the UK and continental Europe, and she plays viola d’amore in the Ariosti Duo.