At home and abroad with Emma Kirkby

We are delighted to welcome the internationally-renowned soprano Emma Kirkby to Tewkesbury for a programme of lute songs and solos from France, Germany, Spain, Italy and Britain. Her selection from Robert Dowland’s London anthology of 1610, A Musicall Banquet includes offerings from Robert’s father, the much-travelled John Dowland). Emma is joined by Nicholas Clapton for the earliest full song cycle in English, the Funerall Teares of 1606, by a British composer so enamoured of Italian style that he changed his surname from Cooper to Coprario. It is a poignant elegy for one of the most dashing of Elizabeth’s courtiers, Charles Mountjoy, dead within months of his marriage to another dazzling figure, Lady Penelope Rich.

Dame Emma Kirkby needs no introduction, as one of the leading lights of the period performance movement almost since its beginnings. Lutenist David Miller is well known as an accompanist and continuo player on lute, theorbo and early guitars, and countertenor Nicholas Clapton has sung in opera houses and concert halls from Santiago to Singapore.