Laurence Alexander Cummings OBE (born 1968) is a British harpsichordist, organist, and conductor. He is music director of the Academy of Ancient Music.
Cummings was born in Birmingham and educated at Solihull School, Christ Church, Oxford and the Royal College of Music. His teachers have included Jill Severs. Cummings has played harpsichord and organ continuo with many leading period instrument groups, including Les Arts Florissants, The Sixteen Choir, the Gabrieli Consort and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.
Cummings was Head of Historical Performance at the Royal Academy of Music from 1997 to 2012. He has served as Musical Director of the London Handel Orchestra and the London Handel Festival [1] (since 1999), Musical Director of the Tilford Bach Society, a founding member of the London Handel Players, and a Trustee of the Handel House Museum. In September 2011, he became the artistic director of the Göttingen International Handel Festival. [2] He has also conducted at English National Opera and Glyndebourne. In November 2020, the Academy of Ancient Music announced the appointment of Cummings as its next music director, effective with the 2021–2022 season. [3] Cummings also serves as music director and principal conductor (maestro titular) of the Orquestra Barroca Casa da Musica, in Porto.
Cummings was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2024 New Year Honours for services to music. [4]
Cummings has recorded commercially as both an instrumentalist and a conductor. [5] His recordings as a conductor have included the first recording of Handel's newly discovered Gloria with soloist Emma Kirkby and the Royal Academy of Music Baroque Orchestra. He has also made recordings of keyboard works of Louis and François Couperin, and Handel. [6]
Trevor David Pinnock is a British harpsichordist and conductor.
Christopher Jarvis Haley Hogwood was an English conductor, harpsichordist, writer, and musicologist. Founder of the early music ensemble the Academy of Ancient Music, he was an authority on historically informed performance and a leading figure in the early music revival of the late 20th century.
Carolyn Watkinson is an English mezzo-soprano, specialising in baroque music. Her voice is alternately characterized as mezzo-soprano and contralto.
The Academy of Ancient Music (AAM) is a British period-instrument orchestra based in Cambridge, England. Founded by harpsichordist Christopher Hogwood in 1973, it was named after an 18th-century organisation of the same name. The musicians play on either original instruments from the period when the music was composed or modern copies of such instruments. They generally play Baroque, Classical, and sometimes Romantic music, though they have also played some new compositions for baroque orchestra in recent years.
Dame Carolyn Emma Kirkby, is an English soprano and early music specialist. She has sung on over 100 recordings.
The English Concert is a baroque orchestra playing on period instruments based in London. Founded in 1972 and directed from the harpsichord by Trevor Pinnock for 30 years, it is now directed by harpsichordist Harry Bicket. Nadja Zwiener has been orchestra leader (concertmaster) since September 2007.
Gustav Maria Leonhardt was a Dutch keyboardist, conductor, musicologist, teacher and editor. He was a leading figure in the historically informed performance movement to perform music on period instruments.
Masaaki Suzuki is a Japanese organist, harpsichordist, conductor, and the founder and music director of the Bach Collegium Japan. With this ensemble he is recording the complete choral works of Johann Sebastian Bach for the Swedish label BIS Records, for which he is also recording Bach's concertos, orchestral suites, and solo works for harpsichord and organ. He is also an artist-in-residence at Yale University and the principal guest conductor of its Schola Cantorum, and has conducted orchestras and choruses around the world.
Richard Egarr is a British conductor and keyboard player.
Christophe Rousset is a French harpsichordist and conductor, who specializes in the performance of Baroque music on period instruments. He is also a musicologist, particularly of opera and European music of the 17th and 18th centuries and is the founder of the French music ensemble Les Talens Lyriques.
Lars Ulrik Mortensen is a Danish harpsichordist and conductor, mainly of Baroque solo music, chamber music and early music repertory. He was a professor in Munich in 1996–99 and has since then been artistic director of Concerto Copenhagen. He received the Léonie Sonning Music Prize in 2007.
Mitzi Meyerson is an American harpsichordist and photographer.
Gillian Keith is a Canadian/British operatic soprano, originally from Toronto, Canada, and living in London, UK.
Martin Pearlman is an American conductor, harpsichordist, composer, and early music specialist. He founded the first permanent Baroque orchestra in North America with Boston Baroque in 1973–74. Many of its original players went on to play in or direct other ensembles in what became a growing field in the American music scene. He later founded the chorus of that ensemble and has been the music director of Boston Baroque from its inception up to the present day.
Elizabeth de la Porte FRCM was a South African harpsichordist, Baroque tutor and pianist. She was renowned for bringing to her performances a rhythmic drive and excitement while allowing the instrument to sing, with extraordinary seamless and legato lines and expressive phrasing. During her performing career she made many public appearances, in the UK, continental Europe, and her native South Africa. She was acclaimed for a wide-ranging repertoire that included Böhm, Rameau, François Couperin, Scarlatti and Handel, but she was praised above all for her playing of J. S. Bach and his six Partitas for solo harpsichord. At her debut in March 1972 she was hailed by The Daily Telegraph as "A mind that both contemplates and acts on intimate stylistic knowledge." Her Bach recording for Saga was reviewed in Records & Recording by John Duarte who wrote, "It is in the Partita in B minor that her playing reaches the proportions of grandeur. There is much to admire in de la Porte's playing, but above all its through line and motivation; she plays as a good orator speaks, and it would be a poor student who could not add to a score the long phrasing marks implied by these performances. It is not just that she sees the end of long phrases and sections from their outset; she carries you in one sweep from beginning to end; it's the wholeness of the music that she communicates, and the joy of it."
John Butt is an English orchestral and choral conductor, organist, harpsichordist and scholar. He holds the Gardiner Chair of Music at the University of Glasgow and is music director of the Dunedin Consort with whom he has made award-winning recordings in historically informed performance. He is a prolific scholar, conductor and performer of works by Johann Sebastian Bach.
Anthony Newman is an American classical musician. While mostly known as an organist, Newman is also a harpsichordist, pianist, composer, conductor, writer, and teacher. He is a specialist in music of the Baroque period, particularly the works of Johann Sebastian Bach, and has collaborated with such noted musicians as Kathleen Battle, Julius Baker, Itzhak Perlman, Eugenia Zukerman, Jean-Pierre Rampal, Leonard Bernstein, Michala Petri, and Wynton Marsalis, for whom he arranged and conducted In Gabriel’s Garden, the most popular classical record of 1996.
Alan George Cuckston is an English harpsichordist, pianist, conductor, and lecturer.
The orchestral Dance Suite from Keyboard Pieces by François Couperin, TrV 245 was composed by Richard Strauss in 1923 and consists of eight movements, each one based on a selection of pieces from François Couperin's Pièces de Clavecin written for the solo harpsichord over the period 1713 to 1730. It is also sometimes referred to as simply The Couperin Suite.
Julian Perkins is a British conductor and keyboard player. Shortlisted for the Gramophone Award in 2021, he is Artistic Director of the Portland Baroque Orchestra in the US. He lives in London, England and is also Founder Director of the early music ensemble Sounds Baroque and Artistic Director of Cambridge Handel Opera Company.