Peter Holman
Musical Director
Peter Holman studied at King's College, London with Thurston Dart, and founded the pioneering early music group Ars Nova while a student. He is now director of The Parley of Instruments and the choir Psalmody, is musical director of Leeds Baroque and director of the Suffolk Villages Festival. He has taught at many conservatoires, universities, and summer schools in Britain, Europe, New Zealand and the USA, and was Reader and then Professor of Historical Musicology at Leeds University from 2000, retiring as Emeritus Professor in 2010. He was awarded an MBE in 2015.
Peter is a regular broadcaster on BBC Radio 3 and 4 and is much in demand as a speaker at learned conferences. He spends much of his time in writing and research, with special interests in the early history of the violin family, in instrumental ensemble music up to about 1700, and in English music from about 1550 to 1850.
He is the author of five books: the prize-winning Four and Twenty Fiddlers: The Violin at the English Court 1540- 1690 (Oxford, 1993), Henry Purcell (Oxford, 1994), Dowland: Lachrimae (Cambridge,1999), Life after Death: The Viola da Gamba in Britain from Purcell to Dolmetsch (Woodbridge, 2010), and Before the Baton: Musical Direction and Conducting in Stuart and Georgian Britain (Woodbridge, 2020).
Photo credit (c) Daniel Johnson Gray
Asuka Sumi
Orchestra leader
Asuka Sumi is a violinist based in Leeds and specialising in historical performance practice.
In 2013, Asuka won the Biber Competition’s “Romanus Weichlein Prize” in Austria; the judges praised her innovative programming, clear style, and a lyrical approach based upon solid technique.
Under the guidance of her father, the violin pedagogue Yasuro Sumi, she began to study historical performance on period instruments, subsequently obtaining degrees from the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. From 2009, she studied at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam with Lucy van Dael and obtained her Master degree in 2014 under Sophie Gent.
Asuka has been playing a significant role in the formation of several chamber music groups based in Europe, among them are Seconda Prat!ca (CD ‘Nova Europa’ m Harmonia Mundi), Fons Harmonicus (Fabulous Fringe prize at FOMU) and Amsterdam Corelli Collective (winner of Eeemerging). With those groups and as a soloist, she has been invited to perform in prestigious venues and festivals such as Resonanzen Festival in Konzerthaus Vienna, the Sablé and Ambronay festivals in France, Göttingen Handel Fenstival, Utrecht Early Music Festival, MA festival in Bruges and the Cambridge Early Music Festival in the UK.
She has also been active as a member of period instrument orchestras under the baton of Herve Nique, Enrico Onofri, Amandine Bayer, Sigiswalt Kuiken and Paul McCreesh.
Since moving in the UK, she is rapidly playing with groups such as the Gabrieli Consort, the English Concert, the Parley of Instrument, London Early Opera, and invigorating the Early Music scene in North by performing with Manchester Baroque, Baroque in the North and Leeds Baroque with which she is appointed to the orchestra leader from 2021.
Asuka is a passionate educator for both modern and baroque violin, and currently teaching Baroque Ensemble at University of York.
Asuka maintains a strong interest in the historical development of violin technique, especially free-ornamentation in the 17th century, and is engaged in continual investigation of the ‘Late seicento violin music in Bologna and Modena.’ Her recent contribution was a lecture-recital about C.A. Lonati and other Roman violinist at the University of Leeds International Concert Series with the Cecilian Ensemble.
Bryan White
Chorusmaster
Bryan White took his undergraduate degree at Southern Methodist University (Dallas, TX), where he studied choral conducting with Lloyd Pfautsch and Barbara Brinson. He completed a PhD at the University of Wales, Bangor and is currently Senior Lecturer and Director of Research in the School of Music at the University of Leeds.
He is a member of the Purcell Society, for which he has edited Louis Grabu’s opera Albion and Albanius and G. B. Draghi’s Ode for St Cecilia’s Day 1687, From harmony, from heav’nly harmony. Bryan is author of Music for St Cecilia’s Day from Purcell to Handel (Boydell, 2019) and in 2019 he curated the Treasures of the Brotherton Gallery exhibition “Gather them in”: The Musical Treasures of W. T. Freemantle. Bryan is the director of the Clothworkers Consort of Leeds, and he works regularly with the University of Leeds School of Music Chorus. He is a longstanding soloist and choral singer with Leeds Baroque, to which he also serves as Chairperson.
Professor Shearer West CBE
Professor Shearer West CBE is the Vice-Chancellor and President of the University of Leeds in the UK.
Previously, she spent seven years serving as the Vice-Chancellor and President of the University of Nottingham, including overseeing operations for the University's campuses in China and Malaysia.
Shearer is a Professor of Art History and has held a number of significant leadership roles in universities and higher education. She obtained her B.A. degree in Art History and English at the College of William and Mary in Virginia, and her Ph.D. in Art History at St. Andrews. She worked as an editor for the Grove Dictionary of Art before taking up her first academic post in art history at the University of Leicester.
In 1996, Shearer moved to the University of Birmingham as Head of the History of Art Department, then Head of the School of Historical Studies, and Acting Head of the College of Arts and Law. She was awarded a personal chair in 2000. In 2008, Shearer was appointed Director of Research at the Arts and Humanities Research Council where she also chaired the Research Directors Group for Research Councils UK. She was appointed Head of the Humanities Division at Oxford in 2011, where she oversaw the launch of the Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH) and the Ertegun Graduate Scholarship Programme in the Humanities. She was appointed Provost and Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of Sheffield in 2015.
Shearer has authored and edited many articles and nine books including Portraiture, The Visual Arts in Germany 1897-1940: Utopia and Despair, and Fin De Siecle: Art and Society in an Age of Uncertainty.
Shearer also has a number of international roles, including acting as the main panel chair for the national research assessment exercise for Humanities in Norway and serving on the steering group to introduce impact into the Excellence in Research (ERA) exercise in Australia.
She has also represented the UK on the Science Europe Humanities Scientific Committee, and has been a jurist for the Spinoza Prize and Gravitation Awards in the Netherlands and the Odysseus and Solvay prizes in Belgium, as well as an Advisory Board member for the Social Sciences Faculty of the University of Vienna.
Currently a member of the Board of the Russell Group, Shearer is also a Trustee and Interim Chair of the National Portrait Gallery in London and a Board member of the Association of Commonwealth Universities. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, the Higher Education Academy and the Royal Historical Society. She received a CBE in the Queen's New Year Honours List of 2021.
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Philippa Hyde
Philippa Hyde commenced her singing studies with Ann Lampard MBE and continued under the tuition of the late tenor David Johnston and Yvonne Minton CBE at the Royal Academy of Music. She graduated with the coveted Dip. RAM in 1993. In 2001 she was awarded the ARAM, an honour granted to past students of the Academy who have achieved distinction in their profession.
Philippa’s busy and varied concert, oratorio and operatic career has taken her all over the world, from Helsinki to Beijing, as well as to many of the major concert venues and festivals of Europe. She has performed regularly with The Academy of Ancient Music, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, The Parley of Instruments, The Musicke Companye, Canzona, The Hanover Band, the Harmonious Society of Tickle Fiddle Gentlemen, as well as with her own Period Instrument ensemble, Bloomsbury Baroque.
Memorable moments of Philippa’s career to date include performing Dido and Aeneas whilst operating a sizeable puppet at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall; performing the same work (without puppets) in the Roman amphitheatre at Sabratha in Libya and attempting a song recital during a thunderstorm in New Delhi, India, as well as performing in such extraordinary venues such as the chapel of Versailles and the throne room in the Rosenborg Palace in Copenhagen.
She loves the personal and musical interactions that her career enables her to experience, whether it is singing alongside choirs throughout the UK, or collaborating with Baroque ensembles in other countries, most notably in Poland.
Philippa is an experienced recording artist. Most recently, she performed the role of Adonis in the first recording of Pepusch’s Venus and Adonis with the Harmonious Society of Tickle Fiddle Gentlemen, which won the 2016 Opera Award in the Preis der Deutschen Schallplatten Kritik in Germany. It is released on the Ramee label.
Philippa is married to Richard Tanner, Director of Music at Rugby School and has two sons. In her spare time she enjoys reading, walking, travel and enjoying the buzz of London. She is currently studying for an MSc in psychology.
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Crispian Steele-Perkins
Crispian Steele-Perkins began playing the trumpet at the age of 10 and, after training at the Guildhall School of Music in London, he became a member of the English National Opera, the Royal Philharmonic, and the English Chamber Orchestra.
As a soloist Crispian’s purity of tone and artistic subtlety have received widespread critical acclaim for more than four decades. On October 10th 2015 the BBC's 'CD Review' concluded that of all worldwide available recordings of Haydn's famous Trumpet Concerto his was 'the one to have'.
Crispian collects and restores antique trumpets upon which he has performed and recorded with The Academy of Ancient Music, The Kings Consort and The English Baroque Soloists. Appropriately, he plays the theme tune to one of the BBC’s longest-running and most popular TV programmes, the Antiques Roadshow.
Described by Virtuoso magazine as ‘the world's leading exponent of the Baroque Trumpet’, particularly when heard in duet with some of the world's greatest singers such as Kiri te Kanawa, Emma Kirkby, John Tomlinson and Bryn Terfel, he has also recorded with popular artists including Led Zeppelin, Kate Bush, Lulu, Cliff Richard, Bob Geldof and Harry Secombe. In addition, he has played on numerous TV scores for shows including, amongst many others, Dr Who, Oliver Twist, The World at War, Inspector Morse and Tales of the Unexpected.
In the world of cinema Crispian participated in more than 80 classic film scores such as Jaws, Gandhi, Zulu Dawn, Star Wars, Rambo, Robocop, Batman, Monty Python’s Life of Brian, Lord of the Rings - The Two Towers and no less than six films from the James Bond series.
Whilst his numerous solo recordings extend from Handel to Glenn Miller, he has featured regularly as a concert soloist in London at the Royal Albert Hall and the Royal Festival Hall, New York’s Carnegie Hall, Boston’s Symphony Hall, the Sydney Opera House and Tokyo’s Suntory Hall. His largest 'live' audience was 133,000 at the Edinburgh International Festival.
In June 2023 he was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the National Centre for Early Music.
In his own words: "My friend and colleague Peter Holman invited me to participate in Leeds Baroque Orchestra’s inaugural season and diaries from subsequent seasons record many return visits including the 10th anniversary and 20th just before Covid devastated all forms of ‘live’ entertainment.
I withdrew from the 2022 Bach concert due a motorcycle accident but major surgery has restored mobility and reinvigorated me to champion the cause of local choirs and Music Societies who form the backbone of British music making. Predominant among them with greatly treasured memories, Leeds Baroque Orchestra and their choir will hopefully flourish and prosper."
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