We are priviliged to welcome back Emma Kirkby to Wendover; she came to perform here first in 2004. Despite her busy recording schedule (to date well over 100 recordings), Emma Kirkby - sometimes referred to as the "queen of early music" - still prefers live performance.

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.

In June 2007, Emma was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

Having risen from humble beginnings as a skiffle player in Yorkshire, Anthony Rooley now enjoys an international reputation in several related fields. Firstly, as a lutenist discovering forgotten masterpieces from the Renaissance. Also, as director of the Consort of Musicke, a renowned ensemble dedicated to the research and performance of the vast repertoire of music for voices and instruments from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Finally, as artistic director of Musica Oscura, a new record company for the bold, the progressive and the discerning, launched officially in Auturm 1993 following the release of the first five CDs. He has also ventured into the field of TV and video, which resulted in Banquet of the Senses, featuring the Consort of Musicke performing erotic madrigals by Claudio Monteverdi in the setting for which they were written - the Palazzo Te in Mantua.

Anthony's most recent activities include two projects in tandem with Radio 3. The first of these, Perfect and Endless Circles was created in collaboration with the novelist Russell Hoban to mark the 350th anniversary of the death of Wiliam Lawes. It has been described as a "delicious mix of music and speech" and its poetry has even been compared to Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood. Also, as a highlight to Purcell's tercentenary year, Anthony has been involved in a bold and progressive re-working of Henry Purcell's and Thomas D'Urfey's musical play Don Quixote. Don Taylor has rewritten Cervantes' original story and the result is a musical with all the excitement of today's London West End shows, but which weaves together inextricably the 1990s and the 1690s. There are rollicking tunes, low-brow lyrics and moments of sublime art all rolled into one.

Anthony still manages to fit in teaching and performances in many corners of the globe as a soloist and in smaller ensembles.

Pictures are reproduced with thanks from the Hyperion web site.