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 Guido Flavio with the Academy of Ancient Music / Christopher Hogwood, Israel in Egypt with Concerto Köln at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and with the SCO at the Edinburgh International Festival conducted by Emmanuelle Haïm, Bach's St John Passion at the BBC Proms with The Monteverdi Choir / Sir John Eliot Gardiner, as well as appearances with the Wiener Akademie / Martin Haselböck and the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra / Paul Goodwin, and tours of the US with Les Violons du Roy / Bernard Labadie and the Netherlands with the Nederlandse Bachvereniging / Gustav Leonhardt.

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