The performers’ hidden secrets!
Anna Crookes – soprano
Anna Crookes hails from Merseyside, and spent ten years studying at Chetham’s School of Music and the RNCM Junior Dept as a pianist. Her indecisiveness has resulted in her pursuing careers as a pianist, singer, piano teacher and very bad housewife for the last twenty-six years, and she is proud to have been a member of ‘Fag’ [pronounced ‘Fadge’ – Ed] since the very first rehearsal. She also loves accompanying and has played for several members of the group, both past and present. Highlights of Fag in recent years have to include working on The Full Monteverdi, a wonderful opportunity to really get inside some of the best a cappella vocal music ever written, and, at the other end of the spectrum, being scared witless by Berio’s extraordinary Sinfonia. When she is not making music professionally, she can be found either on her beloved allotment, spending time with her family or at the back desk of the second violins in the Great Missenden orchestra.
Julia Doyle – soprano
Born and educated in Lancaster, Julia read Social and Political Sciences alongside a Choral Scholarship at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. After finishing her degree, she worked in America as a research consultant in infant linguistic and musical development, and then in Arts Management in London before following in family footsteps (despite their wise advice) and pursuing a singing career. Having joined I Fagiolini in 2007, she has since performed all over the world with them and with many of Europe’s other top ensembles, and is fast establishing a career as as soloist specialising in Baroque repertoire. Outside Bach and Handel, Julia specialises in ‘honking’ like a horn (as featured both on television and live in concert with I Fagiolini at Cadogan Hall), playing the spoons, and singing silly songs with her extremely lively toddler.
Emma Tring – soprano
Emma’s love of singing began at the age of 11 when she starred as orphan Annie in a school production. She continued singing throughout school and then university at Bristol before spending a year on the Early Music Course at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. Since then she has appeared as an oratorio soloist in venues around the UK and has dipped her toe into the operatic world, particularly enjoying a tour as Micaela in Carmen around the five-star hotels of Thailand.
In 2008 Emma was thrilled to join the BBC Singers’ soprano section where one of her first live Radio 3 concerts was the UK premiere of Elliott Carter’s Mad Regales for six solo voices at the Barbican, directed by Oliver Knussen. Another highlight was singing under Daniel Barenboim at the BBC Proms, where he conducted the BBC SO, BBC Singers and soloists with little more than his eyebrows! In 2008 Emma got married in Chile but also began her relationship with I Fagiolini in the weird and wonderful Tallis in Wonderland: one of her best years yet.
Clare Wilkinson – mezzo soprano
Enjoying the privileged position of being the first mezzo in I Fagiolini, a group conceived with no such job description, Clare regularly shoehorns herself into soprano, alto and tenor lines. After a musical upbringing and a choral scholarship (Classics degree between concerts) at Cambridge, she moved to London to indulge her passion for consort singing, Bach and singing with viols, and is now lucky enough to be busily occupied with these things alongside the best and nicest people in the field. Clare has recently dedicated much time to learning a remote Austrian dialect and regaling her colleagues with details of this venture. This year she will fulfil a long-held dream by leaving London to pursue the good life in a Cambridgeshire cottage. Clare likes it when people give her chocolates after concerts, and takes equal responsibility (with Anna) for I Fagiolini’s [surely 'your and Anna’s' – Ed] recent champagne-drinking habit. www.clarewilkinsonmezzo.co.uk
William Purefoy – countertenor
Remarkably untraumatised by the Christ’s Hospital school uniform, William went on to sing like a girl at Magdalen College Oxford, whence he emerged proudly with slightly less than a Gentleman’s Degree in Mathematics. Since then, and he refuses to say exactly how long ago, he has continued to use a small portion of his vocal cords, while at various points playing trumpet in a disreputable band called the Honkin’ Hepcats, singing in the four-man vocal ensemble ‘Cantabile’ and spending three years at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Despite all of this he can still be seen performing in public, sometimes even with the formidable outfit I Fagiolini, often in productions at the Globe and, albeit rather rarely, with the Little Oxford Big Band.
Richard Wyn Roberts – countertenor
Richard has sung notes above middle C ever since becoming a chorister. After some quality time in the Middle East, he read music at New College, Oxford, where he fell into the unorthodox world of ‘The Little Beans’. [Can we just point out that the name I Fagiolini was your idea, Rabbits? - Ed] Following a year at the Royal College of Music, he pursued his love of singing with many leading early music ensembles, including the Tallis Scholars and the Gabrieli Consort. His concert engagements have taken him around the world, and he has featured on recordings with the Academy of Ancient Music and English Baroque Soloists and for BBC TV drama. With I Fagiolini he has enjoyed exploring and bringing to life a wealth of repertoire, both early and contemporary. Richard lives out in the jungle [that’s a very obscure reference to a piece for I Fagiolini by Adrian Williams that no-one is going to understand - Ed] of Surrey and is married to the county’s loveliest consultant, with whom he has two exciting children.
Nicholas Mulroy – tenor
Nicholas Mulroy was born in Liverpool, and began singing at the city’s Metropolitan Cathedral before sacrificing a promising career as a Premiership footballer to become a Choral Scholar reading Modern Languages at Cambridge, subsequently spending four years at the Royal Academy of Music. Since then he has performed internationally with and without I Fagiolini, whom he joined in 2002. He lives in London and enjoys writing in the third person.
Nicholas Hurndall Smith – tenor
Nicholas studied music at Corpus Christi College, Oxford where he was organ scholar, but soon abandoned the solitary organ loft in favour of singing. He met Robert on tour with New College Choir and joined I Fagiolini in 1992. He trained with David Pollard on the Guildhall School of Music & Drama’s Opera Course, supported by The Worshipful Company of Tobacco Pipemakers and Tobacco Blenders, and now is equally at home on the concert platform and operatic stage. Besides performing, he enjoys teaching the choral scholars at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, and is a keen rock climber. [He also has friends wherever in the world we are performing – Ed]
Eamonn Dougan – baritone
Having read music at New College, Oxford, Eamonn studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He now leads a busy career as a consort singer and soloist, principally as a member of I Fagiolini and The Sixteen. His solo recordings include Messiah, St Matthew Passion and Brahms’ Requiem and he has recently performed with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the Academy of Ancient Music, the Hanover Band and Orchestra de la Communidad, Madrid. Eamonn joined I Fagiolini in spite of being asked to memorise a piece at a few hours’ notice for his first concert. He constantly has to mollify his wife about how much room all the Fagiolini music takes up in their house. He will happily talk about English song to anyone who wants to listen.
Charles Gibbs – bass
Charles was born and lived in Bristol, before reading (occasionally) Modern Languages at Cambridge. While there he started to sing and continued at the Royal Academy of Music. His subsequent career has taken him all over the world, with professional choirs, ensembles and sometimes as a soloist. He was a Vicar Choral at St Paul’s Cathedral, spent a year slaving away in Les Miserables, moved to darkest Somerset and reared a family [what - is that like rearing pigs? - Ed], all before re-emerging as a BBC Singer and shortly after also joining I Fagiolini, for whom he had been an occasional guest singer for many years. He now lives in Hertfordshire and envies Anna’s allotment, because there is a 13-year waiting list where he is. As the oldest singer in the group, he feels that his opinions should be treated with a little more respect.
Steven Devine – early keyboards
Steven Devine studied at Chetham’s (partly because he saw Anna winning Young Musician of the Year as a pianist on the TV) and Oxford University. He is the harpsichordist for London Baroque and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and pretty much anyone else who asks nicely. A parallel career as a musical director has seen him conduct at the Proms, co-direct the recent award-winning Chandos recording of Dido and Aeneas, and take charge of Raymond Gubbay’s Christmas by Candlelight Concerts at the Royal Albert Hall for the last six years. Steven is an expert at connecting to the internet in any airport lounge or hotel room in any part of the world in order to fulfil his other role – as Director of Education for the Finchcocks Collection of Historical Keyboard Instruments in Kent.
Eligio Quinteiro – theorbo, lute and early guitars
Eligio Quinteiro was born in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (Canary Islands). He studied classical guitar with Olímpiades García and Joaquín Prats, graduating in 1993. He studied lute and theorbo with Eugène Ferré in Toulouse (France), attending masterclasses with Paul O’Dette and Hopkinson Smith. In 1997 he moved to London to follow a postgraduate course in Early Music at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He is artistic director of the ensembles Capilla Cayrasco and Camerata Cayrasco, and is in great demand as a soloist and as an accompanist for recitals of baroque song (on theorbo) and romantic lied (on guitar). As a specialist in basso continuo, Eligio has performed and recorded with the leading early music ensembles in the UK and Spain. He has given masterclasses in chamber music, lute and guitar at the Royal College of Music (London) and the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama (Cardiff). He made his stage debut at the age of 11, playing the snare drum in the “Toy Symphony” with the Orquesta Filarmónica de Gran Canaria.
Joy Smith – early harps
Joy studied harp, flute, piano and harpsichord at Chetham’s School of Music in Manchester from the age of eight. She went on to study English at Oxford University before winning a scholarship on the postgraduate harp course at Trinity College of Music, London, where she gained the United Kingdom Harp Association Prize. Her eclectic taste in music has led her to play in an unusual array of venues from the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden and the Royal Albert Hall to the Glastonbury Rock Festival and the Café de Paris. She is regularly found travelling the world with her arsenal of seven harps (from electric to medieval) and is delighted to be the official I Fag harpist. She is co-director of the baroque-fusion group Eclipse and loves bellydancing.
