De Pasión Mortal: Two Golden Ages of Song

Performers

Nicholas Mulroy (Tenor)

Elizabeth Kenny (Archlute, guitar & theorbo)

Toby Carr (Guitars & theorbo )

Born in Liverpool, Nicholas Mulroy was a chorister at the Metropolitan Cathedral there. He studied Modern Languages at Cambridge, and completed postgraduate musical studies at the Royal Academy of Music. He has sung throughout the world, and his work has focused mostly on Baroque repertoire: Bach’s Evangelists at the Sydney Opera House and in the composer’s own churches in Leipzig, Arnstadt, and Weimar; Rameau at the Opéra national de Paris; Monteverdi at Carnegie Hall; and Purcell at Wigmore Hall. He has sung with some of the world’s leading ensembles and conductors, including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Australian Chamber Orchestra, English Baroque Soloists, Brussels Philharmonic, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Copenhagen Phil, BBC Philharmonic, and Antwerp Symphony Orchestra. Mulroy has guest-directed the Irish Baroque Orchestra in Monteverdi, Aurora Orchestra in a programme of Bach, Purcell, and Latin American songs, and is Associate Director of the Dunedin Consort, with whom he has directed various choral programmes and both of Bach’s Passions. He is also the Artistic Director of Cambridge University Chamber Choir. Other highlights have included appearances with The English Concert, Latvian Radio Choir, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and Budapest Festival Orchestra with Iván Fischer. He is a Musician in Residence at Girton College, Cambridge, and a Visiting Professor at the Royal Academy of Music.

Elizabeth Kenny is one of Europe’s leading lute players. Her playing has been described as ‘radical’ (The Independent on Sunday) and ‘indecently beautiful’ (Toronto Post). She has devised several critically acclaimed recordings of solo music from the ML Lute Book and, with long standing vocal partners, songs by Lawes, Purcell, and Dowland. Her most recent solo recording Ars longa (Linn) was nominated for the 2019 BBC Music Magazine Recording of the Year. She has an extensive discography of collaborations with chamber ensembles across Europe and the USA. In 2017 Shakespeare Songs with Ian Bostridge and co-collaborators won the Grammy best solo vocal recital, and the same year viol consort Phantasm and Kenny won the Gramophone Early Music Award for their recording of Dowland’s Lachrimae or Seven Tears. In thirty years of touring Kenny has played with many of the world’s best period instrument groups, including extended spells with Les Arts Florissants and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. She has given premiere performances of solo and chamber pieces by James MacMillan, Benjamin Oliver, Heiner Goebbels, Rachel Stott, and Nico Muhly. Kenny has been Professor of Lute at the Royal Academy of Music since 1999, and Dean of Students since 2020. She was Professor of Musical Performance at the University of Southampton and Director of Performance and Performance Studies at the University of Oxford between 2012 and 2020.

Lutenist and guitarist Toby Carr is known as a versatile and engaging artist, working with some of the finest musicians in the business. While studying the classical guitar at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance he was introduced to historical plucked instruments, an interest he pursued during a postgraduate degree at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, graduating in 2016 and welcomed back as a professor in 2021. Now in demand as a soloist, chamber musician and continuo player, his playing has been described as ‘sensuous and vivid’ (The Guardian), ‘eloquent’ (BBC Music Magazine) and ‘mesmerizing’ (Opera Today). Carr has performed with most of the principal period instrument ensembles in the UK and beyond, as well as with many symphony orchestras, opera companies and ballet companies. He collaborates with singers such as Nicholas Mulroy, Alexander Chance, and Helen Charlston. Notable recordings include Drop not, mine eyes with Alexander Chance for Linn, and Battle Cry with Helen Charlston for Delphian, which won both BBC Music Magazine and Gramophone awards in 2023. He is a member of Ceruleo, Lux Musicae London, and Ensemble Augelletti, works frequently with vocal groups Fieri Consort and Ensemble Pro Victoria, and has appeared on recordings with all of these groups.