Lewes Baroquefest Performers 2025
The small county town of Lewes is blessed with a diverse and exceptionally large group of highly talented baroque artists. Both professional and amateur groups flourish in the area. Lewes Baroquefest will be showcasing top professional virtuoso instrumentalists and singers, alongside outstanding local choir the Baroque Collective Singers.
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Alison Bury
Alison Bury was a founder member and regular leader of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, appearing and recording with them as leader, soloist and director. As leader of the OAE she was usually to be found at Glyndebourne Festival Opera for performances of the operas of Handel and other baroque composers. In the 2007 season, she led the OAE in the Glyndebourne dramatisation of Bach’s St Matthew Passion and in 2009 she was there for Purcell The Fairy-Queen and Handel Julio Cesare. For the 2012 season, she played with the OAE in Purcell Fairy Queen and Mozart Nozze di Figaro. For over 20 years, Alison was the leader of the English Baroque Soloists and has taken part in numerous recordings and toured in Europe, Australia, the U.S.A. and the Far East, including the Millennium Tour of Bach’s Cantatas.
Alison Bury started playing the baroque violin while a student at the Royal College of Music. After completing her studies there she won a Boise Scholarship to study at the Salzburg Mozarteum with Sandor Vegh and Nikolaus Harnoncourt. While in Austria she performed and recorded with Concentus Musicus of Vienna. Alison also plays with the Raglan Baroque Players and accompanied them on their visit to the Baroque Music Festival in Australia. Recent chamber music activities include performances of the Beethoven Septet with other members of the OAE and recitals with harpsichordists Nicholas Parle, Maggie Cole and Malcolm Proud. She is highly regarded by singers with whom she has worked, including Andreas Scholl and Daniele de Niese, with whom she worked on a recording of Mozart arias.
Additional solo work includes performances and recordings with the Academy of Ancient Music, the Raglan Baroque Players and the Taverner Players
ATE Vocal Ensemble
ATÉ, a vibrant new music ensemble, emerges as a beacon of female collaboration and innovation in the realm of choral music. The name "ATÉ" embodies our collective spirit, resonating with the Greek concept, meaning folly, daring, and the pursuit of something greater than oneself. ATÉ is not just a choir; we are pioneers on a mission to expand the horizons of choral music. While our foundation lies in the rich tradition of choral singing, we are unafraid to venture into uncharted territory. Our repertoire spans a diverse spectrum, from classical masterpieces to contemporary compositions, all reimagined through the lens of female interpretation. A key aspect of our mission is the celebration of female composers whose voices have often been hushed throughout history. At the heart of ATÉ's vision lies a passion for reinvention. We are driven by the desire to breathe new life into familiar music, uncover hidden gems, and shed light on the voices of the past that have long been silenced. Through our commitment to reimagining the familiar and embracing the unfamiliar, we aspire to ignite a spark of curiosity and wonder in all who listen.
Baroque Collective
The Baroque Collective is a period instrument orchestra based in Lewes, East Sussex.
Directed by conductor and singer John Hancorn and violinist Alison Bury, The Baroque Collective offers an enticing and flexible range of programmes from Locke and Purcell to Mozart and from trios to major works with chorus. Performances include Handel’s Messiah with the East Sussex Bach Choir and Bach’s St John Passion with the Esterházy Chamber Choir in Lewes; Purcell’s King Arthur with the Fletching Singers; ‘The Cares of Lovers’ at the Uckfield Festival and Handel’s Acis and Galatea at the Montpelier and Powis Festival, Brighton; and regular performances of major baroque choral works with the East Sussex Bach Choir and the Baroque Collective Singers.
Founded by conductor John Hancorn in 2013, The Baroque Collective Singers is a chamber choir made up of the very best singers from Lewes and the surrounding area. The choir aims to explore a wide range of repertoire, a cappella and with instruments, with a focus on baroque.
BCS will premiere Orlando Gough’s ‘Out Of My Head’ on Saturday 17 September 2022 in a series of outdoor, a cappella, flashmob-style performances on Saturday 17 September 2022 in Lewes and will sing Christmas music by Bach on Wednesday 21 December 2022.
Baroque Collective Singers
Daniel Murphy
Daniel Murphy specialises in performing a variety of plucked-stringed instruments and enjoys a solo career as well as collaborating with many different singers and instrumentalists. Inspired by the great lute players of the past, historical accuracy is at the heart of his music-making.
As a young guitarist, Daniel Murphy studied at the Junior Guildhall Music Department for 4 years with Mark Eden and Matthew Robinson. He then started his Undergraduate studies at the Royal College of Music studying Classical Guitar with Carlos Bonell. During the first two years of his degree, he gradually transitioned to the historical performance department and in his third year, he became RCM’s first ever undergraduate principal-study theorbo player, studying with Jakob Lindberg. In 2023, he graduated from a Masters of Performance Degree with distinction.
Daniel’s freelance work includes collaborating with ensembles such as Ex-Cathedra, Armonico Consort, Fiori Musicali, London Baroque Orchestra and The Bellot Ensemble, with whom he recently performed at the Utrecht Early Music Festival. As a lutenist, he regularly performs lute song with numerous singers including Emma Kirkby, Mary Bevan and Hugh Cutting. Opera forms a large part of his continuo playing, performing works including Handel’s Rodelinda; Purcell’s Fairy Queen, and Monteverdi’s l’Orfeo.
Career highlights include performing with the Taverner Consort, conducted by Andrew Parrott in Frauenchiemsee, Germany and numerous features on Radio 3’s Early Music Show and German Radio, WDR 3 Alte Musik. As a soloist, Daniel was recently the only lute finalist in the New Elizabethan Award 2022.
Beth Stone
As an avid player of all flutes from renaissance all the way through to modern flute, Beth Stone enjoys a colourful career performing in many different settings in the UK and Europe. She has had the pleasure of working with a variety of orchestras including the Academy of Ancient Music; Ex-Cathedra; Cambridge Handel Opera Company; Britten-Shostakovich Festival Orchestra; The Sixteen; National Youth Jazz Orchestra among many others. Her playing can also be heard on recordings with the Taverner Consort and the Academy of Ancient Music. Beth’s radio debut took place in Germany for WDR3 and she has won several prizes in competitions including the 2023 International H.I.F. Biber Competition; the Telemann Fantasia Recording Competition 2021 and the 2020 Samnium University’s International Orchestra Auditions Awards.
Chamber music has always been a central part of Beth’s music making. She has performed with several chamber groups, and now primarily, the award-winning Flutes & Frets Duo and Lumas Winds which have enabled her to perform in many festivals, concerts, competitions and events. Supported by several schemes and trusts, she has had the opportunity to tour Scotland, perform in festivals in Krakow, York, Spain, Italy, Antwerp and many other exciting recitals as a chamber musician.
Beth spent seven years studying at Chetham’s School of Music from age eleven, taking an interest in historical flutes in her final two years there. As an Ian Evans Lombe Scholar, she graduated from the Royal College of Music with a first class honours in 2022, where she studied modern flute with Gitte Marcusson and historical flutes with Rachel Brown as part of the joint principal course, winning the RCM McKenna Prize for the highest end-of-year recital mark in a baroque instrument.
David Wright
David Wright was an almost entirely self-taught musician, first coming to the harpsichord as an unlikely refuge from his East End gangland upbringing before gaining a scholarship to the Royal College of Music, where he won several prizes, including the International Broadwood Competition, and from which he graduated with distinction. Since then he has performed and recorded with some of the world’s leading musicians including Emma Kirkby, James Bowman, Tasmin Little, Joshua Bell and Julian Lloyd Webber, and as a soloist with many groups of international renown. He has directed numerous concerts from the harpsichord, including the first modern performance of Arne's The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green, and has given many solo recitals, notably of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. In 2011 David joined Red Priest, with whom he has recorded two acclaimed CDs and toured to many parts of the world. In addition to this he is active as one of the UK’s busiest working harpsichordists performing with several of the country’s leading period instrument ensembles and chamber orchestras – including the Academy of Ancient Music and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields - as well as building, tuning and restoring harpsichords and chamber organs.
Flutes and Frets
London-based duo, Flutes & Frets present intimate, magnetic performances that exploit the fragility and versatility of their ensemble. Their concerts feature a variety of instruments that enable them to express the colours, gesture and emotions of repertoire from the medieval era through to contemporary.
Flutes & Frets have had the pleasure of performing all over the UK and Europe and have been winners of several international competitions. Their German radio debut with WDR 3 took place in 2023 and they have been featured in world-class festivals including Misteria Paschalia (Poland), York Early Music Festival, Alpen Classica Festival (Italy), Flanders Festival Antwerp, and the International Early Music Festival of Sierra Espuña. Upcoming announcements include the release of their debut album in late 2025 with EM Records.
Known for their onstage chemistry and interaction, they cultivate a special sound-world taking audiences on a journey through time.
Hugh Cutting
Julia Bishop
Julia Bishop discovered her love of Early Music whilst studying at the Royal College of Music and is now recognised as one of the leading Baroque violinists of her generation. She has toured the world and made extensive recordings with many period instrument orchestras in the UK including the English Concert and as concertmaster for 5 years with the Gabrieli Consort and Players. In 1997 Julia co-founded the ensemble Red Priest with recorder Piers Adams and enjoyed 19 years of huge success touring Europe, America and the Far East, and making 6 highly acclaimed recordings.
Recently Julia has become increasingly popular for her lively and informative teaching on workshops and courses around the UK and abroad. She heads the Early Music department at Chichester University and has been a guest teacher at the Royal Academy and Royal College of Music.
Julia is currently enjoying developing repertoire and performing concerts with soprano Ana-Maria Rincon and keyboardist Howard Beach in their chamber ensemble Purcell’s Muse.
John Hancorn is music director of the BREMF Singers, Baroque Collective Singers, East Sussex Bach Choir and Eastbourne Choral Society and co-director of The Baroque Collective and the newly launched Lewes Baroquefest!. Performances for the Brighton Early Music Festival include Bach’s St John Passion and B Minor Mass, Monteverdi Vespers, Handel Semele, and a staged performance of Purcell The Fairy Queen.
John leads vocal workshops and masterclasses specializing in baroque repertoire including regular visits to Early Music Fora and ‘Sing and Discover’ days and online workshops with Richard Wigmore throughout the UK. He is Associate Lecturer in Choral Studies at the University of Chichester Conservatoire, Choral Director at East Sussex Academy of Music and is a specialist examiner for Trinity Laban. He directed chamber choir courses at Dartington for many years and was a tutor at AIMS Summer School.
John directed the Orlando Consort in Tarik O'Regan Scattered Rhymes; the world premiere of Orlando Gough's opera The Finnish Prisoner with singers from the Finnish Opera; a critically acclaimed professional recording of Ed Hughes's Buried Flame and Purcell’s King Arthur for New Sussex Opera. He was Artistic Advisor for a large-scale concert at Glyndebourne for Homelink in November 2019.
Photo: Robert Knights
Photo: Beth Mercer
John Hancorn
Piers Adams
Piers Adams has been heralded in the Washington Post as ‘the reigning recorder virtuoso in the world today’. His concert tours have taken him to all corners of the globe, including 54 tours of the United States, performing over 1000 concerts with his iconic baroque quartet Red Priest - as well concertos with international symphony and chamber orchestras, recitals in many guises and numerous outings on TV, radio and disc. Born in 1963, he studied physics at university before entering the Guildhall School of Music, rapidly branching out from there to create his own unique voice, expanding the recorder’s repertoire to include every musical genre from renaissance to romantic to rock. Amongst his recent ventures are a baroque ‘chillout’ album, Bach Side of the Moon, which reached No. 5 in the international New Age Music charts, his boundary-crossing duo, Baroque Alchemy, combining 18th century music with 21st century sound technology, and the world premiere performance of Howard Moody’s epic Eagle Concerto, showcasing the amazing ‘Eagle’ recorder. Alongside this he continues his regular touring with Red Priest and David Wright, and is currently completing a new, advanced online teaching programme called The Enlightened Recorder Player.
Hugh Cutting studied at the Royal College of Music’s International Opera Studio, graduating with the prestigious Tagore Gold Medal, personally presented by King Charles III. He is both the first countertenor to win the Kathleen Ferrier Award (2021), and the first to be named a BBC New Generation Artist (2022-25).
Recent and upcoming opera debuts include Teatro alla Scala Milan, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Santa Fe Opera, Bayerische Staatsoper, English National Opera, Dallas Opera, Garsington Opera, Opernhaus Zürich, and Pinchgut Opera Sydney.
Some concert highlights include Bach’s St Matthew Passion with Collegium Vocale Gent / Philippe Herreweghe; Orchestra of St Luke’s / Bernard Labadie; Finnish Radio Symphony Orchstra / Nicholas Collon; Wiener Symphoniker / Matthew Halls; Bach B Minor Mass with Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin / Vladimir Jurowski; Bach Weihnachtsoratorium with Monteverdi Choir / Sir John Eliot Gardiner; Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment / Masaki Suzuki; Handel Partenope and Ariodante with Les Arts Florissants / William Christie; Handel Amadigi with The English Concert / Kristian Bezuidenhout; Handel Theodora with Jupiter Ensemble; Purcell Dido and Aeneus with Il Pomo d’Oro / Maxim Emalyechev; Handel Deborah with NDR Radiophilharmonie / Nicholas McGegan; Benjamin Written on Skin with Stavanger Symfonierkester / George Benjamin.
Recital is central to Hugh’s ambition, and he seeks to expand the possibilities of countertenor repertoire in this sphere. He has given recitals with orchestra at the Carnegie Hall, the Paris Philharmonie and St Martin in the Fields with conductors including Bernard Labadie, William Christie, and Peter Whelan. Recitals with pianists have included those broadcast live on BBC radio at Oxford International Song, the Brighton Festival, the Cheltenham Festival, and the Ryedale Festival. In 2025/26, Hugh curates a residency at London’s Wigmore Hall.
Rebecca Leggett
Rebecca Leggett is a 2023/25 ‘Rising Star of the Enlightenment’ with the OAE and last year performed Bach’s Easter Oratorio with the group at the Southbank Centre. Rebecca works regularly with Les Arts Florissants and was part of the 11th edition of their young artist programme, Le Jardin de Voix, in 2023/24. Last year, she toured Purcell’s ‘The Fairy Queen’ with the group to venues such as Teatro alla Scala, The Lincoln Center NYC and The Royal Albert Hall. She has just completed a special concert tour of French baroque music celebrating William Christie’s 80th birthday where she made her Carnegie Hall debut. Her next project with the group will be performing the role of Piacere in Handel’s ‘Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno’ in concert halls across Europe. In December 2024, Rebecca joined The Monteverdi Choir as alto soloist for their tour of Bach and Charpentier works conducted by Christophe Rousset and will be joining the group again in June 2025 for a programme Bach cantatas conducted Masaaki Suzuki.
Rebecca was a finalist at the Kathleen Ferrier Awards 2023 at the Wigmore Hall and in recent years she has given recitals for the Lewes Song Festival, London Song Festival and Oxford Lieder Festival. A recipient of the Coro Nuovo Young Musician of the Year 2018, Rebecca was made an ambassador of the competition in 2022 which seeks to support young musicians from Sussex. Rebecca gave a Sussex themed recital entitled 'The South Country' alongside Hugh Cutting and George Ireland for the Brighton Festival in May 2024.
In his 40+ year career Richard Tunnicliffe has performed and recorded a wide range of music covering six centuries. He was a founder member of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and was a member of renowned viol consort Fretwork until 2015. He now divides his time between solo playing and chamber music, and in 2018 he and his daughter, violinist/violist Luba Tunnicliffe, founded Clun Valley Music to bring high-quality chamber music to South Shropshire where he now lives.
His acclaimed solo recordings include a disc of Early Italian Cello Music, the 6 cello concerti by John Garth which is broadcast frequently and a 2012 recording of Bach’s cello suites. He has also published versions of suites Nos. 2 and 5 in arrangements for String Quartet and has given master classes and lectures on aspects of performance in music colleges and universities at home and abroad. He teaches baroque cello at the Royal College of Music.
This season sees him in trios by Rebecca Clarke, Schumann and Mozart with his piano trio The Sunnycliffe Trio and Clun Valley Music’s own “Rivers” Festival at the end of May. For details, please visit www.clunvalleymusic.co.uk