Rayfield Artists - Robin Blaze

ROBIN BLAZE

Countertenor

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"[Robin Blaze] just shines literally throughout this disc...Blaze is an extraordinary interpreter when it comes to sensitivity to text. I don't think I've ever heard such a seductive, limpid beauty of tone that has so much emotion behind it."
- BBC Radio 3 CD Review, April 08

Robin Blaze is now established in the front rank of interpreters of Purcell, Bach and Handel, and his career has taken him to concert halls and festivals in Europe, North and South America, Japan and Australia. He studied music at Magdalen College, Oxford and won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music where he is now a professor of vocal studies. He works with many distinguished conductors in the early music field: Harry Christophers, Emmanuelle Haïm, Philippe Herreweghe, Richard Hickox, Christopher Hogwood, Ton Koopman, Paul Goodwin, Gustav Leonhardt, Robert King, Nicholas Kraemer, Sir Charles Mackerras, Trevor Pinnock and Sir John Eliot Gardiner. His work with Masaaki Suzuki and the Bach Collegium Japan has been particularly praised by critics: the two latest CD releases, Bach's B Minor Mass and the three solo countertenor cantatas, have been described as "heart-stopping" in Gramophone.

Robin Blaze's opera engagements have included Athamas Semele at Covent Garden and English National Opera; Didymus Theodora for Glyndebourne Festival Opera; Arsamenes Xerxes, Oberon A Midsummer Night's Dream and Hamor Jephtha for English National Opera; and Bertarido Rodelinda for Glyndebourne Touring Opera and at the Göttingen Handel Festival.

Robin's engagements this season and beyond include appearances with the Wiener Akademie / Martin Haselböck, Handel's Athalia with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra / Nicholas McGegan, Messiah with Bernard Labadie in Colorado and Vancouver, St Matthew Passion with Nederlandse Bachvereniging / Gustav Leonhardt, Jephtha for The King's Consort, a tour of Europe with Bach Collegium Japan / Massaki Suzuki and a recital with Sonnerie at the Lufthansa Baroque Festival. His disc of solo Bach Cantatas with Masaaki Suzuki was released at the beginning of 2007 on the BIS label.

This short biography is for information only and should not be reproduced. Please download a full biography here.