Latest posts
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Jordi Savall
Life Jordi Savall was born on 1 August 1941 in Igualada, near Barcelona, Spain, and baptized Jordi Savall i Bernadet. He trained at the Barcelona Conservatory, graduating in 1965, then dedicated himself to the viola da gamba, specializing at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel under August Wenzinger, whom he succeeded as professor of viol…
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Emma Kirkby
Life Emma Kirkby was born Carolyn Emma Kirkby on 26 February 1949 in Camberley, Surrey, England. She studied classics at Somerville College, Oxford, and did not originally train as a singer, teaching school before being drawn into the early music revival of the 1970s. Emma Kirkby became a leading soloist with ensembles including the Taverner…
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Andreas Scholl
Life Andreas Scholl was born on 10 November 1967 in Eltville, West Germany, into a family of singers, and joined the Kiedricher Chorbuben boys’ choir at age seven. At seventeen he won a rare place at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, studying countertenor technique under Richard Levitt and René Jacobs, with soprano Emma Kirkby and lutenist…
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Gustav Leonhardt
Life Gustav Leonhardt, born Gustav Maria Leonhardt on 30 May 1928 in ‘s-Graveland, Netherlands, died on 16 January 2012 in Amsterdam. He studied organ and harpsichord at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel from 1947 to 1950 before making his harpsichord debut in Vienna, where he also studied musicology. Gustav Leonhardt taught at the Vienna…
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René Jacobs
Life René Jacobs was born on 30 October 1946 in Ghent, Belgium, and began as a boy chorister before studying classical philology at the University of Ghent. Encouraged by the Kuijken brothers, Gustav Leonhardt and Alfred Deller, René Jacobs became one of the finest countertenors of his generation, recording rare early Baroque repertoire by composers…
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Julian Bream
Life Julian Bream was born on 15 July 1933 in Battersea, London, and died on 14 August 2020 in Donhead St Andrew, Wiltshire. An English classical guitarist and lutenist, he studied piano and composition at the Royal College of Music before devoting himself to guitar and lute, largely self-taught on the latter. He made his…
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Paul O’Dette
Life Paul Raymond O’Dette was born on 2 February 1954 in Pittsburgh and raised in Columbus, Ohio, where he began on electric guitar before turning to lute transcriptions and ultimately the lute itself. An American lutenist, conductor, and musicologist specializing in early music, he has made more than 120 recordings of Renaissance and Baroque repertoire…
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Nigel North
Life Nigel North was born on 5 June 1954 and is an English lutenist, musicologist, and pedagogue. Largely self-taught on the lute after studying guitar at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, he later trained at the Royal College of Music and briefly with Diana Poulton. Appointed Professor of Lute at the Guildhall at…
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Hopkinson Smith
Life Hopkinson Smith was born on 7 December 1946 in New York City, the son of architectural writer G. E. Kidder Smith. A Swiss-American lutenist long resident in Basel, Switzerland, he graduated from Harvard University before moving to Europe in 1973 to study lute and vihuela with Emilio Pujol. In the mid-1970s he helped found…
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Rolf Lislevand
Life Rolf Lislevand was born on 30 December 1961 in Oslo and is a Norwegian performer of early music specializing in lute, vihuela, Baroque guitar, and theorbo. He studied classical guitar at the Norwegian Academy of Music before entering the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel in 1984 to study with Hopkinson Smith and Eugen Dombois.…