Aberdeen Bach Choir - April 2007 Soloists

Evelyn Tubb

Evelyn Tubb - Soprano

Evelyn Tubb’s long love affair with music enjoys several strands that weave together to make a most stimulating life, with constant new horizons. At present, performing is still her first love, and that manifests variously: many years devoted to vocal ensemble work of the most elevated kind, with the Consort of Musicke particularly (and the evidence is tangible in the long sequence of fine recordings she has made with the group); her solo career has taken a unique path, working closely with Michael Fields, Anthony Rooley and other excellent accompanists.

Her recitals are always exploratory, finding unknown masterpieces, presenting them with a real sense of theatre and bringing a rich diversity of vocal colour. Typically a recital will move from exquisite still contemplation to fiery rage or disturbed madness – a whole spectrum of human passions.

She is Vocal Professor at the internationally acclaimed specialist early music establishment, the Schola Cantorum in Basel, Switzerland and each year young singers leave with a firm foundation of reliable vocal skills equipping them for a lifetime of development.

Ruth Holton

Ruth Holton - Soprano

Ruth Holton read music at Clare College, Cambridge, where she was a choral exhibitioner. She made her first solo recording in Bach's St John Passion for Deutsche Grammophon under Sir John Eliot Gardiner and rapidly became well known for her performances of the Baroque and Classical repertoire. Ruth's discography includes Carissimi's Jephtha, Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, Bach cantatas with Gardiner and Ton Koopman, Mozart's Salzburg Masses, Handel's Messiah, Schütz's Christmas Story, Haydn's Nelson Mass, Handel's Susanna and Bach's B minor Mass. During the years 2000 and 2001 she completed a project to record all the sacred cantatas by Bach with the Holland Boys Choir.

Ruth is a regular performer at several European festivals, including Flanders, Aldeburgh, Greenwich, The Three Choirs Festival and the Bachfest in Leipzig. She has performed with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and Gustav Leonhardt in Rome and Vienna, and with Fretwork in Finland and Germany. She has had a long association with the choir of St Thomas’s Leipzig in Bach's own church, and she performed his Mass in B minor in the Bachfest 2000, which was televised in Europe and Japan to mark the 250th anniversary of the composer's death. She returns to Leipzig in 2007 to sing Bach’s Johannes Passion.

James Griffett - Tenor

James Griffett

James Griffett’s solo career has taken him all over Europe, South America, India, Hong Kong and Japan, singing in international festivals and recording for radio, television and in the studio, with an extensive list of oratorio and recital CDs.

He is particularly known as a soloist on the oratorio platform, with baroque repertoire such as Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers, Bach’s Johannes-Passion and Handel works featuring strongly. He is on three CD recordings of the Vespers and has sung the piece over a hundred times, with choirs such as the Tolzer Knabenchor, Aachener Domchor, Montserrat Choir of Spain and King’s College Cambridge. As the founder of Pro Cantione Antiqua, many of these performances have been with this soloist-ensemble.

Alongside his performing, James gives masterclasses nationally and internationally; his teaching has included the universities of Oxford, Nottingham and Newcastle and the Antwerp Conservatoire, and currently the talented young Choral Scholars at Bradford Grammar School, a group he founded some ten years ago, and Northern Youth.

Joseph Cornwell

Joseph Cornwell - Bass

Joseph Cornwell read music at York University and studied singing at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama as a BP scholar. He started his career with the Consort of Musicke, the Tallis Scholars and the Taverner Consort, soon making his Proms debut in the Albert Hall singing the Monteverdi Vespers of 1610 under Andrew Parrott, which he also recorded for EMI. He has since worked with such conductors as William Christie, Harry Christophers, Eric Ericson, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Robert King, Hervé Niquet, Paul McCreesh, Philip Pickett and Sir Roger Norrington, making many recordings. His career has taken him throughout Europe, to the USA, South America, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, India and China.

His many recordings include Bach’s St Matthew Passion Evangelist, Boyce’s Peleus & Thetis, Campra’s Requiem, Handel’s Acis & Galatea (Gramophone Baroque Vocal CD of 2000), Carmelite’s Vespers and Messiah, Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610, Mozart’s Mass in C Minor and Requiem, Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle (BBC Radio 3 Record Review Choice), Awake Sweet Love (17th Century Lute Songs), Fairest Isle (songs from the British song book), Purcell’s King Arthur, Vivaldi’s Arsilda and more than 40 recordings with groups such as the Consort of Musicke, The New London Consort, Pro Cantione Antiqua and the Tallis Scholars.

Ian Caddy Bass-Baritone

Ian Caddy - Bass

Ian Caddy studied at the Royal Academy of Music, London, with Henry Cummings, and subsequently with Otakar Kraus. 

He stepped in at short notice to replace Stephen Roberts in the April 2007 performance of the Monteverdi Vespers of 1610 with Aberdeen Bach Choir.

He has appeared in a wide variety of operas and concerts with all the major British opera companies and orchestras, as well as amassing an impressive list of engagements around the world: with opera houses, festivals, orchestras and ensembles, Radio and TV.

Engagements in 2005 included four concerts as guest-conductor of amateur chamber choirs in England and France:  music by Zieleňski, Charpentier, Purcell, Mondonville, Mozart, Duruflé and Ben Newton.

During the current season Ian is singing concerts across England, with some performances of note:  a series of Messiahs in Dublin’s National Concert Hall, Elijah in London’s Cadogan Hall, and a return to Austria for the Gasen Opera Recital.  This season sees Ian Caddy on stage as much as on the concert platform:  in a special production of Ages Ago, an operetta by W. S. Gilbert and Frederick Clay; and he returns to Opera Holland Park in The Merry Widow, following Die Fledermaus in 2004 when his notable stage-presence “excelled”.  Once again, he repeats his acclaimed Pooh-Bah in Jonathan Miller’s stunning production of Mikado, with English National Opera.

Ian Caddy is a world-authority on Baroque Acting and Gesture.  He has directed ‘baroque’ productions in London, across Europe, and for film and TV. He produces occasional publications of works by Donizetti, Mayr and Ian Schofield.

Michael George

Michael George - Bass-Baritone

Michael George is established as one of Britain's most versatile bass-baritones. He was a chorister at King's College, Cambridge under Sir David Willcocks, and studied at the Royal College of Music, where he was a major prize-winner. He has appeared with all the leading UK orchestras and ensembles, has sung throughout Britain at all the major festivals and venues and has performed extensively abroad.

Michael has worked widely as a recording artist, and releases include Schubert's Mass in A Flat with Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Boyce Odes with the Hanover band, Bach Cantatas and Masses with King's College Cambridge and Stephen Cleobury, numerous recordings with Harry Christophers and The Sixteen, the complete Purcell series with Robert King and The King's Consort and much music with Philip Pickett and the New London Consort, including Monteverdi's Orfeo.

Performances have included Bach's St Matthew Passion with David Hill and the Bach Choir, Purcell's Faerie Queen in The Netherlands, Schubert Mass with Muti, Beethoven's Missa Solemnis with the Halle and Mark Elder, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony with Sir Neville Marriner in Brisbane and major tours of Handel's Messiah with Christophers and The Sixteen in Europe and Japan. He has sung Mozart's Requiem Mass with the Vienna Philharmonic and also with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and Bach's St John Passion with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the LPO.