CLARE WILKINSON
Clare Wilkinson read Classics at Trinity College, Cambridge, then took up a scholarship to Trinity College of Music, London, where she studied with Hazel Wood.
Clare is now in demand with many distinguished conductors and ensembles. With Sir John Eliot Gardiner she has performed in many of the world’s major concert venues, from the Hong Kong Philharmonic to the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and the Royal Albert Hall, focusing particularly on the works of Bach (the St Matthew Passion, St John Passion, Magnificat, B minor Mass, Christmas Oratorio and numerous cantatas, including the alto cantata ‘Vergnügte Ruh’). Other highlights include concerts with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the English Concert, Les Talens Lyriques/Christophe Rousset, the Swedish Baroque Orchestra, the Purcell Quartet, Manchester Camerata/Nicholas Kraemer, the Liverpool Philharmonic (world première of Stephen Pratt’s ‘Uneasy Vespers’), the Hanover Band, the Dunedin Consort/John Butt and Florilegium.
Having given her first concert with Musica Antiqua of London at the age of seventeen, Clare is equally at home with viols. She works regularly with the Rose Consort of Viols (their recent CD, Four Gentlemen of the Chapel Royal, has received excellent reviews) and also with Fretwork, with whom she performs repertoire from the renaissance to the present day; the composers Duncan Druce and John Joubert have written song cycles for Clare and the group, premièred at the Wigmore Hall in February 2009. A mixed CD, The Silken Tent, will be released soon.
Clare also enjoys stage work; she is a member of I Fagiolini (winners of the Royal Philharmonic Society Ensemble Award 2006), and with them was part of the ground-breaking ‘secret theatre’ opera project The Full Monteverdi, directed by John La Bouchardière, which clocked up nearly 90 performances, including a run at the Lincoln Center, New York; also the newly commissioned opera The Birds by Ed Hughes and the group's trademark staged madrigal comedies. With Gardiner she has sung Third Lady in The Magic Flute and Zinnia in Chabrier’s L’Etoile. With Laurence Cummings she sang Galatea in the London Handel Festival‘s 2008 production of Aci, Galatea e Polifemo.
Clare features on numerous CDs. For a full discography, schedule of forthcoming concerts and more, please visit www.clarewilkinsonmezzo.co.uk
[Photograph by: Stephan Schweiger]
