Ex Cathedra & Britten Sinfonia
Biography Ex Cathedra & Britten Sinfonia
Mark Padmore
was born in 1961 in London and grew up in Canterbury. He initially studied clarinet before switching to vocal studies in 1979 as a Choral Scholar at King’s College. In 1991 he began a close collaboration with William Christie and Les Arts Florissants and, in 1992, with Philippe Herreweghe and the Collegium Vocale Gent. Padmore soon gained international renown for his performances as the Evangelist and the tenor soloist in Bach’s choral works. In the 1990s he began appearing as an opera performer more frequently, with credits including Peter Brooks’s staging of Don Giovanni in Aix-en-Provence, Tom Rakewell in Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels, Handel’s Jephtha at English National Opera, and staged performances of the Bach Passions with Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic. He has performed Captain Vere in Britten’s Billy Budd at the Glyndebourne Festival and took part in the world premiere of two one-act works by Sir Harrison Birtwistle in Aldeburgh. In the 2016-17 season, Mark Padmore served as artist-in-residence with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, and in the 2017-18 season he will take on the same position with the Berlin Philharmonic. He also enjoys close associations with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the Britten Sinfonia. Padmore is intensively devoted to lieder singing. His recording of the Schubert song cycles with Paul Lewis won Gramophone’s Vocal Solo Award in 2010; his account of Schumann’s Dichterliebe with Kristian Bezuidenhout received the Edison Award in 2011, and, in 2013, his interpretations of Britten’s Serenade and Nocturne earned the Echo Klassik Award. In 2016 the magazine Musical America named him Vocalist of the Year. Mark Padmore is artistic director of the St. Endellion Summer Music Festival in Cornwall.
Ex Cathedra
Hailed as “one of Britain’s very best choirs” (New York Times), Ex Cathedra is a world-class vocal ensemble which leads the choral sector in the fields of performance, learning and wellbeing.
For more than 50 years we have been producing highly-acclaimed concerts and participatory projects, and nurturing young musicians from our youth training choirs to our student and graduate Scholar schemes.
We enjoy an international reputation for our performances of the best, the unfamiliar and the unexpected, and take pride in developing the repertoire through researching and reviving little-known gems, commissioning new work, and developing exciting ways of engaging audiences and participants.
Founded by Jeffrey Skidmore in Birmingham in 1969, the group has grown into a unique musical resource, comprising specialist chamber choir, vocal Consort, period-instrument orchestra and a thriving education and participation programme. We are an Associate Artist at the B:Music venues Symphony Hall and Town Hall, and have appeared at festivals and concert series across the UK and as far afield as New York and Tel Aviv.
As well as bringing new insights to choral masterpieces, we are committed to expanding the choral repertoire. We have recorded three best-selling CDs of newly re-discovered music from the Latin American Baroque and are regarded as leading interpreters of music from the French Baroque.
We are also proud of our reputation for championing new choral music. Highlights have included Stockhausen’s World Parliament from Mittwoch aus Licht, James MacMillan’s oratorio Seven Angels, A Shakespeare Masque by the Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy and composer Sally Beamish, and several major works from John Joubert, Alec Roth and Liz Dilnot Johnson.
Ex Cathedra has made a significant number of award-winning recordings for Hyperion, NMC, Orchid Classics, SOMM, Signum, and on our own label, including the Gramophone Award-winning A French Baroque Diva with Carolyn Sampson. Our most recent recording, The Traveller by Alec Roth, is now available on our website ahead of its official launch in July.
Alongside our concerts, we deliver an extensive programme of award-winning schools, wellbeing and community projects, led by a team of expert vocal tutors. We believe that singing is for everyone, and that singing together transforms individuals into a community, boosts wellbeing, builds confidence, teamwork and empathy. We want everyone to experience the remarkable benefits of singing and of inspirational choral music.
Nurturing talent is at the heart of our work. Our Academy of Vocal Music choirs offer a wide range of creative, learning and performing activities with a nurturing ethos. The choirs perform alongside Ex Cathedra and independently including, for example, the annual performances of The Nutcracker with Birmingham Royal Ballet. We are always pleased to welcome new singers – do get in touch.
Our choral Scholarships programme provides a year-long scheme for recent graduates seeking to establish their professional singing career, and our Student Scholarships provides opportunities for singers studying at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire.
We have worked in over 1,000 schools across the UK and also schools in Belgium, China, New Zealand, Singapore and Thailand. We have developed an innovative programme that brings the best of online and ‘in person’ support to classrooms. To put singing at the heart of your school and gain to access resources that inspire, enable and support pupils and teachers, visit our dedicated www.singingschools.co.uk website.
Our dedicated www.singingmedicine.co.uk site is the place to find out more about our work to support health and wellbeing, from bedside sessions at Birmingham Children’s Hospital to dementia groups, mental health, Long Covid and stroke recovery.
There are spaces and places for you to sing with us too! We run a wellbeing-focused community choir in Ladywood and offer drop-in sessions for adults, and for parents/carers with toddlers. Get in touch to find out more, we’d love to see you there.
Jeffrey Skidmore
Skidmore’s reputation as one of the UK’s leading choral directors and an ardent advocate of the importance of singing in people’s lives today is rooted in his work with Ex Cathedra, the ensemble he founded 50 years ago.
Jeffrey read music at Magdalen College, Oxford, before returning to his native Birmingham to develop Ex Cathedra into the internationally-acclaimed choral group it has become today.
Jeffrey’s driving passion has been to refresh and reinvigorate the choral repertoire and to make it accessible to as many people as possible. He and Ex Cathedra have long been known for exciting and innovative but always attractive programming, underpinned by thorough research and preparation. Under his direction, Ex Cathedra has also shown an enduring commitment to vocal education from its groundbreaking children’s singing programme, Singing Playgrounds, to the nurturing of professional singers at the start of their careers.
Jeffrey is a pioneer in the field of research and performance of choral works of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, both in the old and new worlds, and has won wide acclaim for his recordings of French and Latin American Baroque music with Ex Cathedra. An Honorary Fellow at Birmingham Conservatoire and a Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham, he has prepared new performing editions of works by Araujo, Charpentier, Lalande, Monteverdi and Rameau, amongst others.
With Ex Cathedra, Jeffrey has commissioned more than thirty new works and conducted many world premieres by composers including Sally Beamish, Fyfe Hutchins, Gabriel Jackson, John Joubert, James MacMillan, Roxanna Panufnik, Alec Roth, Daryl Runswick, Peter Sculthorpe, Philip Shepherd, Peter Wiegold, Stevie Wishart and Roderick Williams.
As director of Ex Cathedra and its associated Consort and Baroque Orchestra, Jeffrey has appeared in many concert halls and festivals across the UK and overseas. He has made a number of highly-acclaimed recordings ranging from Renaissance polyphony to Latin American and French Baroque. He has also worked with other ensembles including the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Aalborg Sinfoniorkester, the Irish Baroque Orchestra, Sinfonia New York, Nederlands Kamerkoor and the BBC Singers.
In the field of opera he has worked with Birmingham Opera Company, Welsh National Opera, Marc Minkowski and David McVicker at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris, and has given the first performances in modern times of the French Baroque operas Zaïde by Royer and Isis by Lully.
Jeffrey is Artistic Director of the Early Music programme at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, and is a regular contributor to the choral programme at Dartington International Summer School and to a wide range of choral workshops and summer schools at home and abroad, most recently as ‘professor’ of ‘coro barroco’ in the 32nd Festival of Music in Curitiba, Brazil.
Jeffrey has been awarded an OBE for services to choral music and an honorary doctorate by the University of Birmingham.
