Originally, Emma Kirkby had no expectations of becoming a professional singer. As a classics student at Oxford and then a schoolteacher she sang for pleasure in choirs and small groups, always feeling most at home in Renaissance and Baroque repertoire. She joined the Taverner Choir in 1971 and in 1973 began her long association with the Consort of Musicke.

Emma feels privileged to have been able to build long term relationships with chamber groups and orchestras, in particular London Baroque, the Freiburger Barockorchester, L'Orfeo (of Linz) and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and now with some of the younger groups, the Palladian Ensemble and Florilegium. Her recordings range from sequences of Hildegarde of Bingen to madrigals of the Italian and English Renaissance, cantatas and oratorios of the Baroque to works of Mozart, Haydn and J. C. Bach.

London Baroque is a regular visitor at the Salzburg, Bath, Beaune, Innsbruck, Utrecht, York, Ansbach and Stuttgart Bach festivals. The ensemble's repertoire spans the period from the late-sixteenth century up to Mozart and Haydn, mixing unknown composers with familiar masterpieces. The group has appeared on television in England, France, Germany, Belgium, Austria, Holland, Spain, Sweden, Poland, Estonia and Japan.