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Emma Kirkby





Dame Carolyn Emma Kirkby (b. , 15 June, 2007


EDUCATION AND EARLY CAREER

Emma Kirkby was educated at Sherborne School for Girls. Her father was Geoffrey John Kirkby , the famous Royal Navy Officer.

Originally, Kirkby had no expectations of becoming a professional singer. As a classics student at Oxford and schoolteacher she sang for pleasure in choirs and small groups, always feeling at home most in Renaissance and Baroque repertoire.

Kirkby was a founder member of the Taverner Choir , and in 1973 began her long association with the Consort Of Musicke . She took part in the early Decca Florilegium recordings with both the Consort of Musicke and the Academy Of Ancient Music , at a time when most college-trained sopranos were not seeking a sound appropriate for early music instruments. She therefore had to find her own approach, with enormous help from Jessica Cash in London, and from the directors, fellow singers and instrumentalists with whom she has worked over the years.

Kirkby has built 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 .


RECORDINGS

Kirkby has made well over a hundred recordings of all kinds, from sequences of , who died in 1944.

More recent recordings: an anthology, ''Classical Kirkby'', devised and performed with .

In 1999 Kirkby was voted ''Artist of the Year'' by Classic FM Radio listeners and in November 2000 she received the ''Order of the British Empire''. BBC Music Magazine in April 2007 published a survey of critics to nominate “The 20 greatest sopranos”, placing Kirkby at number 10.

Despite all her recording activity, Kirkby prefers live concerts, especially the pleasure of performing favourite programmes with colleagues.


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