Matthew Baker | |
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Born | Sydney, Australia |
Genres | Classical, Opera, Early Music, Oratorio |
Occupation(s) | Baritone singer |
Instruments | Vocals |
Website | www.matthewbaker.nl |
Matthew Baker is an Australian bass-baritone who specialises in the performance of early music and Baroque operas and oratorios.
Matthew Baker was born in Sydney and received his BA in Medieval Studies from the University of Sydney in 1997. After serving as a Lay Vicar in the choir of St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, he studied early music vocal performance at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, receiving a Master of Music degree in 2005. That same year he sang the role of Sylvandre in a production of André Campra's L'Europe galante conducted by William Christie which toured to cities in France and Spain. [1] He sang the roles of Giove and Nettuno in the first modern performance of Gioseffo Zamponi's 1650 opera Ulisse all Isola di Circe at the Festival Printemps Baroque du Sablon (Spring Festival of Baroque at the Sablon) in Brussels in 2006. [2] In 2006, he also won the Handel's Messiah Bass Arias prize in the 12th Concorso Internazionale di Canto Solistico of the Fondazione Seghizzi in Gorizia. [3]
Matthew Baker is currently a core musician at The Netherlands Bach Society [4]
André Campra was a French composer and conductor of the Baroque era. The leading French opera composer in the period between Jean-Baptiste Lully and Jean-Philippe Rameau, Campra wrote several tragédies en musique and opéra-ballets that were extremely well received. He also wrote three books of cantatas as well as religious music, including a requiem.
Dominique Visse is a French countertenor and founder of the Ensemble Clément Janequin.
The University of the Philippines Singing Ambassadors, also known as the UP Singing Ambassadors or UPSA, is one of the major performing musical groups based at the University of the Philippines Diliman (UP-Diliman) in Quezon City, Philippines. UPSA is the State University's official performing group for choreographed choral music and resident choir of the UP College of Arts and Letters. The UPSA has performed music from different styles: classical music, international songs, spirituals, ethnic, Broadway, pop, jazz, gospel, inspirational songs and rock. As ambassadors of Philippine culture, the UPSA incorporates cultural dances, costumes and traditions from various regions in the Philippines as part of its repertoire.
Opéra-ballet is a genre of French Baroque lyric theatre that was most popular during the 18th century, combining elements of opera and ballet, "that grew out of the ballets à entrées of the early seventeenth century". It differed from the more elevated tragédie en musique as practised by Jean-Baptiste Lully in several ways. It contained more dance music than the tragédie, and the plots were not necessarily derived from classical mythology and allowed for the comic elements, which Lully had excluded from the tragédie en musique after Thésée (1675). The opéra-ballet consisted of a prologue followed by a number of self-contained acts, often loosely grouped around a single theme. The individual acts could also be performed independently, in which case they were known as actes de ballet.
Amanda Forsythe is an American light lyric soprano who is particularly admired for her interpretations of baroque music and the works of Rossini. Forsythe has received continued critical acclaim from many publications including Opera News, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the Boston Globe.
Francesco Sacrati was an Italian composer of the Baroque era, who played an important role in the early history of opera. He wrote for the Teatro Novissimo in Venice as well as touring his operas throughout Italy. His most famous piece is La finta pazza, said to be the first opera ever performed in France. The manuscript of this work was long thought to be lost but a touring edition of the manuscript was discovered by musicologist Lorenzo Bianconi in 1984. Some of the music bears striking similarities to the score of Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea, prompting scholars to speculate that Sacrati had a part in composing the surviving version of that opera. The United States premiere of La finta pazza, and first performance outside Europe, occurred in April 2010 at Yale University.
Malin Hartelius is a Swedish soprano who performs regularly with conductors such as Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Ton Koopman, Riccardo Chailly, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Peter Schreier, Herbert Blomstedt, and Frans Brüggen. She has collaborated with orchestras like the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, the Tonhalle Orchester Zurich, the San Francisco Symphony, and the Concentus Musicus Wien.
The Boston Early Music Festival (BEMF) is a non-profit organization founded in 1980 in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. to promote historical music performance. It presents an annual concert series in Boston and New York City, produces opera recordings, and organizes a weeklong Festival and Exhibition every two years in Boston. A centerpiece of these festivals has been a fully staged Baroque opera production. One of BEMF's main goals is to unearth lesser-known Baroque operas, which are then performed by the world's leading musicians armed with the latest information on period singing, orchestral performance, costuming, dance, and staging at each biennial Festival. BEMF operas are led by the BEMF Artistic Directors Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs, BEMF Orchestra Director Robert Mealy, and BEMF Opera Director Gilbert Blin. In 2008, BEMF introduced its Chamber Opera Series as part of its annual concert season. The series presents semi-staged productions of chamber operas composed during the Baroque period. In 2011, BEMF took its chamber production of Handel's Acis and Galatea on a four-city North-American tour. In 2004, BEMF initiated a project to record some of its work in the field of Baroque opera on the CPO recording label. The series has since earned five Grammy Award nominations, including a 2015 Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording.
Boston Baroque is the oldest period instrument orchestra in North America. It was founded in 1973 by the American harpsichordist and conductor, Martin Pearlman, to present concerts of the Baroque and Classical repertoire on period instruments, drawing on the insights of the historical performance movement.
Leyla Pınar is a Turkish harpsichordist and musicologist. She is the founder and artistic director of the Istanbul Barok ensemble and the International Istanbul Baroque Music Festival, which she founded in 1994. Pınar also teaches in the Drama and Music Department of Yıldız Technical University in Istanbul.
L'Europe galante is an opéra-ballet in a prologue and four entrées by André Campra to a French libretto by Antoine Houdar de la Motte.
Gerald English was an English tenor. He performed operatic and concert repertoire, was a recording artist, and was a sometime academic.
Max van Egmond is a Dutch bass and baritone singer. He has focused on oratorio and Lied and is known for singing works of Johann Sebastian Bach. He was one of the pioneers of historically informed performance of Baroque and Renaissance music.
Giuseppe Zamponi also Gioseffo Zamponi was an Italian composer best remembered for his opera Ulisse all'isola di Circe performed in Brussels in 1650, which was the first opera performed in the low countries, at the time part of the Spanish ruled Southern Netherlands.
Anders J. Dahlin is a Swedish tenor. He studied at the Music Conservatory Falun in Sweden, at the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo, and at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen.
Knut Schoch is a German tenor in opera and concert as a specialist in the field of historically informed performance, and an academic voice teacher.
Giuseppe Di Bianco is an Italian composer, conductor, arranger, mainly of choral music.
Orlanda Velez Isidro is a Portuguese classically trained coloratura soprano. Her preferred genre of music is Renaissance and Baroque repertoire. Since completing her education in Portugal and the Netherlands, she has lived and performed in the Netherlands.
Wilke te Brummelstroete is a Dutch mezzo-soprano. She has recorded Bach cantatas with John Eliot Gardiner and appeared as the valkyrie Siegrune in Wagner's Die Walküre at the Bayreuth Festival.
Svanholm Singers is an internationally acclaimed Swedish male-voice chamber choir founded in 1998 and based in Lund. It comprises around 20 singers, most of whom between 20 and 30 years of age. The choir is led by conductor Sofia Söderberg, and is known for its precise intonation, tonal focus, and vivid dynamics. Svanholm Singers performs concerts and tours mainly in Europe and Asia.