“This is an excellent recording…Emily Atkinson’s beautifully controlled voice is perfectly matched by Belinda Paul’s oboe and Louise Strickland’s recorder. What a privilege it must have been to be a member of such a club, if the performances there were anything approaching the quality of these! ”
Brian Clark: Early Music Review
Concentus VII performs small scale baroque works for wind instruments, voices, strings and continuo. Our repertoire ranges from Monteverdi to C.P.E.Bach and is drawn from the intimate, often virtuosic and experimental music composers wrote for the enjoyment of their friends, families and colleagues.
Members perform with leading early music ensembles (The Academy of Ancient Music, The English Concert, New London Consort, Il Gardino Armonico, Gabrieli Consort and Players, Philidor Ensemble, The Sixteen). Recent performances include concerts at the British Society for Eighteenth Century Studies conference at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, Handel House Museum, Stoke Newington Early Music Festival, Totnes Early Music Society and the Kingston Early Music Festival.
Our second album Et in Arcadia Ego has recently been released by Resonus Classics: a showcase of striking Italian Cantatas and instrumental music by Handel, Scarlatti, Lotti and Mancini, much of it published by Green Man Press. It has been featured on BBC Radio 3’s In Tune and CD Review and on Radio Marconi in Italy.
The ensemble’s recordings are available from iTunes, Spotify, CDBaby and Amazon
Emily Atkinson Belinda Paul Louise Strickland Cheyney Kent Dan Tidhar Sophie Willis
Belinda fell in love with early music while studying modern oboe and recorder at the VCA (University of Melbourne.) She won a scholarship to study baroque and classical oboe in The Netherlands with Frank de Bruine and Ku Ebbinge, and is now based in London, playing with orchestras such as The Academy of Ancient Music (as principal and sub-principal), The Sixteen, The Gabrieli Consort and Players, La Stagione Frankfurt etc.
She has recorded with the Academy of Ancient Music, Ex Cathedra and The Hanover Band; her operatic engagements include a stint at St Petersburg’s Hermitage Theatre and the Utrecht Festival. She co-founded the ensemble Concentus VII, an ensemble which brings the cantatas and chamber music of the mid 18th century to new audiences, performing in pubs and cafes as well as more traditional concert venues.
Belinda is a specialist in 19th century performance practice and has performed many of the major romantic oratorio and orchestral works with orchestras in the UK and abroad. She studied romantic oboe with Marcel Ponseele, topping her year at Philippe Herreweghe’s Abbaye aux Dames course. As a member of the Fourier Ensemble (a piano and wind group) she has performed music from Mozart to Poulenc on original instruments.
She has appeared with I Fagiolini and the Medieval ensemble The Artisans on curtal, shawm and recorder, and is a member of the wind band Blondel. Not to neglect contemporary music, she has performed new works for early winds with the German group Triskelion.
Cheyney studied at the Royal Academy of Music and King’s College, London University and works as a classical session singer in London. Cheyney sings in churches, at events, in concert halls with small and very large groups, on film and radio and in all sorts of different venues across the UK.
Cheyney has worked with The English Concert, Ex Cathedra, Ludus Baroque and The Sweelinck Ensemble. In 2016, Cheyney established the City Bach Collective who perform music by J. S. Bach and his contemporaries as part of the long-running Bach Vespers series in the City of London. He continues to sing as a freelance chorister in the major London churches.
As a consort singer, she has toured extensively with the Tallis Scholars and participated in their premiere of John Tavener’s Requiem Fragments at the BBC Proms. Emily is also a busy chamber music recitalist, performing with viol consorts, baroque chamber groups and other early music ensembles in the UK and abroad. She enjoys presenting creative song recitals with other musicians, and she is an experienced and dedicated teacher of primary class music.
American soprano Emily Atkinson studied at the Crane School of Music in New York and the Royal College of Music in London. She has appeared as a soloist in more than forty Bach cantatas with the Sweelinck Ensemble for Lutheran Vespers Services in the City of London.
Dan Tidhar studied harpsichord performance with Mitzi Meyerson in Berlin and Ketil Haugsand in Cologne. Since coming to Cambridge in 2004 he has been combining a busy performance schedule as a harpsichordist with research activities, as well as work as a tuner and early keyboard specialist. Dan has directed the Cambridge University Baroque Ensemble for several years, and has performed as harpsichord soloist and a continuo player with local ensembles as well as internationally renowned ensembles, such as The Kings Consort, Retrospect, and Chelys, and has founded Chesterton Baroque as an ensemble in residence at St George’s, Chesterton. Dan is currently a Research Fellow at City University London, a member of the Centre for Music and Science in Cambridge and a Research Associate at Wolfson College, Cambridge. Dan has recently been guest editor of the November 2014 special issue of Early Music, dedicated to early music and modern technology.
As a freelancer Louise has worked with high profile ensembles such as New London Consort, Il Giardino Armonico, The Gabrieli Players, Retrospect Ensemble, London Handel Orchestra and Les Arts Florissants. She has freelanced many orchestras including Brandenburg Consort, Florilegium and Musical and Amicable Society. Sophie enjoys a busy teaching career at Godolphin and Latymer School.
Recorder player and clarinettist Louise began her studies at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and furthered her interest in early music by taking a Masters in Historical Musicology at Goldsmiths, University of London. She also studied Classical and Romantic orchestral performance at the Abbaye aux Dames, Saintes, France as part of the Jeune Orchestre Atlantique. As a freelancer, Louise has performed with many acclaimed orchestras and ensembles. She is also a founder member of the clarinet and basset horn trio Clarino Ensemble.
Sophie Willis studied at the Royal College of Music with Richard Tunnicliffe and Jenny Ward-Clarke. After graduating she toured with the European Union Baroque Orchestra and formed the chamber ensembles Maniera and Armonico Tributo performing continuo with singers such as James Bowman and Emma Kirkby.