Tenor.

The need for trust in new music.

One hot summer's day, while still a student at Cambridge, I was standing under Trinity's Great Gate when a singer friend approached me with someone I thought must be a sort of charismatic student pop star... it was Chris Page. Within minutes he was asking me if I'd like to join Gothic Voices.

I have always been fascinated by the sounds and ‘ambience’ of medieval music. As a schoolboy in Kassel, Germany, I was already singing solos and conducting choirs and orchestras of my friends. Although most of my work today is as a soloist (Monteverdi, Bach - particularly the evangelists - and Handel are probably my solo homeland), I also love consort singing and keep it a priority in my career. Besides Gothic Voices I perform with The Harp Consort and my own ensemble, Trinity Baroque, (Schütz, Monteverdi again, Sweelinck and Byrd).

I've performed in various guises in all sorts of halls, churches and cathedrals across the world, including the Royal Albert Hall and the Barbican, London, the Mozarteum, Salzburg and the Konzerthaus, Vienna, working with conductors such as Andrew Parrott, Andrew Manze, Philippe Herreweghe and Frieder Bernius.

Some recent highpoints have been a live broadcast (mdr) recital in the Händelhaus in Halle; a solo concert and workshop in singing and performance in Montevideo, Uruguay; and taking the lead role in the opera Orpheus by Reinhard Keiser (1674-1734) in the Konzerthaus in Berlin. Later this year another lead role (Ulisse) in Monteverdi's Il Ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria will get me to Australia for the first time (at last!) I've recorded a few Bach cantatas with John Eliot Gardiner, and there's a Monteverdi Vespers recording with Tragicomedia (Stephen Stubbs), on which I have the extra excitement of combining solo and ensemble singing.

In my ‘free time’ I direct my own ensemble Trinity Baroque (for more information please see www.trinitybaroque.com). Otherwise, free time often means - maybe surprisingly - more travelling, but this time with a rucksack and on old buses or trains somewhere in darkest Sri Lanka or Borneo. Closer to home I spend time enjoying the beautiful countryside here in Lewes, or go running to work off the excesses of post-concert celebrations.