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"Nicholas Isherwood is a singer with a remarkable voice and a natural gift, but also inner refinement in his performance on stage. There is not even a shadow of a pose or artificiality in him, which often invades baroque technique, only pure singing which flows naturally and expressively. No trace of technical singing chains, but an expressive span from the lowest (so beautiful and smooth!) to the soft sonority of higher lyrically sophisticated tones. All this with sweetness and elegy, without lack of dramatic emphasis. What can we say about the unique singing scene Superbe Colli by Stefano Landi and the lyrical and internal dramatic logic of Nicholas Isherwood? Nothing-such interpretation you just have to hear-it resounds in the listener for a long time. Outstanding artistic interpretation, which is very hard to attain. Performances on the top level!"
- Bogdan Ucakar, Vecer (Ljubljana, Slovenia), August, 1999
Biography
Nicholas Isherwood is one of the leading singers of early music and contemporary music in the world today. He has worked with Joel Cohen, William Christie, Peter Eötvös, Paul McCreesh, Nicholas McGegan, Kent Nagano, Zubin Mehta and Gennadi Rozhdestvensky as well as composers Sylvano Bussotti, Elliott Carter, George Crumb, Hans Werner Henze, Mauricio Kagel, György Kurtág, Olivier Messiaen, Giacinto Scelsi, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Iannis Xenakis in prestigious venues around the world (La Scala, Covent Garden, the Théatre des Champs Elysées, Salzburg Festival, Concertgebouw, Berlin Staatsoper, Vienna Konzerthaus, Tanglewood). Operatic roles include "Antinoo" in Monteverdi's Il Ritorno di Ulisse in Patria with Boston Baroque, "Claudio" in Händel's Agrippina with Nicholas McGegan, "Satiro" in Rossi's Orfeo and “Pan” in Marais' Alcione with Les Arts Florissants, "Joas" in Porpora's Il Gedeone with Martin Haselböck, "Frère Léon" in Saint François d'Assise in the last composer supervised production, "Der Tod" in the two productions of Ullmann's Der Kaiser von Atlantis with the Bach Akademie in Stuttgart and 2e2m, “Roméo” in Dusapin's Roméo et Juliette at the Avignon Festival, “Lear” in Hosokawa's Vision of Lear for the Munich Biennale, "Il Testimone" in Bussotti's Tieste at the Rome Opera, “Micromégas” Mefano's Micromégas and "Lucifer" in the world premieres of Stockhausen's Montag, Dienstag, and Freitag from Licht at La Scala and the Leipzig Opera and in Donnerstag aus Licht at Covent Garden. He has improvised with Steve Lacy, Joelle Léandre, Sainkho Namtchilak and David Moss, recorded 48 CDs and appeared in three films. He has published an article on Scelsi the journal of the Scelsi Foundation. His article on the vocal vibrato will be published next year in the Journal of Singing in 2007 and his book The Techniques of Singing will be published in 2008 by Bärenreiter Verlag. He has been visiting professor of singing at SUNY at Buffalo, Notre Dame and the Ecole Normale de Musique and taught master classes in venues such as the Paris Conservatoire, Salzburg Mozarteum, Milan Conservatory and Stanford. This semester he is replacing the head of the vocal area at Calarts.
You can hear Nicholas Isherwood's music on the following currently available recordings:
Click below to listen to some of my music (Real Player required) :
George Frideric Haendel Agrippina (© harmonia mundi 1992)
1 Vagheggiar de tuoi click here
Live from Slovenia
3 monodies:
Frescobaldi click here
Kapsberger click here
Puliaschi click here
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