Alison Bury

Alison Bury has been involved with the British early music scene since her student days at the Royal College of Music.  In the 1980s she played with all the pioneering groups including the Academy of Ancient Music, the English Concert and the English Baroque Soloists. She led the EBS until 2008, touring all over the world and recording the Mozart operas and many of Bach's sacred choral works, including the cantatas in the Bach Cantata Pilgrimage in 2000 with Sir John Eliot Gardiner.

In 1986 she was a founder member of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. With the OAE she has appeared on concert platforms throughout the British Isles, Europe and the United States of America as leader, soloist and director, as well as playing at Glyndebourne for many years, until 2015.  

She lives in Lewes and is well known in the area, leading the Baroque Collective Players and working with the Baroque Collective Singers and the East Sussex Choir. Alongside her orchestral playing she enjoys chamber music with her baroque trio, the Geminiani Ensembe, which has played in Music in Kilkenny, the Sligo Early Music Festival and in the Workshop Series in Lewes which she directs with her husband, the baroque oboist Richard Earle. She gives duo recitals with harpsichordist Maggie Cole and also plays in a flute/violin/harpsichord trio with Rachel Beckett and Alistair Ross.

Catherine Martin

Catherine Martin read music at St Anne’s College, Oxford, completing her postgraduate studies with David Takeno at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, on the Advanced Solo Studies course.

During this time she became interested in historical performance, playing the baroque violin alongside her modern violin studies. She spent twelve years as a member of the English Concert under the direction of Trevor Pinnock, before leaving in 2005 to become leader of the Gabrieli Consort and Players. In 2010 Catherine was also appointed concertmaster of Die Kolner Akademie in Germany. She has been the leader of the Early Opera Company since its inception in 1994.

Catherine has been a member of the Salomon String Quartet since 2003, as second violin to Simon Standage, with whom she also plays trio sonatas in Collegium Musicum 90. Catherine has played with Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s English Baroque Soloists.

Catherine appears on many recordings;  for Deutsche Grammophon and Winged Lion with the Gabrieli Consort and Players, EMI with Ensemble Galant and Chandos with I Fagiolini.

Ashley Solomon

Ashley Solomon enjoys a successful career as a soloist, chamber musician and guest director in the UK, across Europe as well as the Americas, Far East and Australia. He is the director of Florilegium, the baroque ensemble which he co-founded in 1991 and has made close to 40 recordings with them. As a soloist, he has performed worldwide, incuding concerts in the Sydney Opera House, Esplanade (Singapore), Teatro Colon (Buenos Aires), Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), Konzerthaus (Vienna), Beethoven-Haus (Bonn), Handel-Haus (Halle) and Frick Collection (New York). 

In recent years he has been involved in a unique recording project using a private collection of 17th and 18th century flutes. To date he has released three volumes in the Spohr Collection series involving 25 rare and original one-keyed baroque flutes made of ivory, boxwood and porcelain. This project has given new insight into the sound world of European flute makers in the baroque period.

Since 2003 Ashley has been training vocalists and instrumentalists in Bolivia, working on the remarkable collection of music held in archives by the Moxos and Chiquitos people. He formed Arakaendar Bolivia Choir in 2005 and Arakaendar Orchestra in 2007 and has directed them in concerts at major international festivals. In 2008 he was one of the first Europeans to receive the prestigious Bolivian Hans Roth Prize, given in recognition of the enormous assistance he has given to the Bolivian musicians, their presence on the international stage and the promotion and preservation of this music.

Ashley is Head of Historical Performance at the Royal College of Music, having been appointed a professor in 1994.  In 2014 he was awarded a Personal Chair and in July 2017 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music and in 2019 he became a Fellow of the Royal College of Music. Since 2014 he has been working closely with the Royal Collection Trust to curate musical performances at royal venues including Buckingham Palace (the Queen's Gallery and the Ballroom), at Windsor Castle and in the Queen's Chapel.

Julia Bishop

Julia discovered her love of Early Music during her studies at the Royal College of Music when one day she heard the baroque orchestra being directed by the inspiring Cat Mackintosh. Thirty years later Julia is recognised as one of the leading baroque violinists of her generation, touring the world extensively and making numerous recordings with the period instrument orchestras of the United Kingdom including the London Classical Players, the Academy of Ancient Music, the English Concert, of whom she was a member for six years, and as leader and soloist with the Gabrieli Consort and Players and more recently guest leader with the Hanover Band and Florilegium.

In 1997 Julia co-founded the ensemble Red Priest with recorder player Piers Adams and enjoyed nineteen years of huge success touring Europe, the Far East and America and also making six highly acclaimed CDs. After a break from Red Priest while her daughter was growing up, Julia is now back with the group again and in the 2024/25 season has been performing throughout the UK and abroad (see www.redpriest.com for all upcoming dates).

2024/25 has also seen the beginning of a flamboyant new collaboration between Julia and lutenist Paula Chateaneuf, exploring the bizarre and maverick composers of the 17th century in a series of chamber concerts around the UK.

Recently Julia has become increasingly popular for her lively and informative teaching in baroque workshops and on courses around the UK and abroad. Since 2014 she has developed the Early Music department at the University of Chichester Conservatoire and has also been guest baroque violin teacher and examiner at the Royal Academy of Music and the University of York. 

Simon Standage

Simon Standage is well known as a violinist specialising in seventeenth and eighteenth century music. As leader and soloist with the English Concert from its foundation until 1990 he made many recordings (including Vivaldi's Four Seasons, nominated for a Grammy award). He also recorded solo and chamber music, including all of Mozart's violin concertos with the Academy of Ancient Music, of which he was, with Christopher Hogwood, Associate Director from 1991 to 1995. Since his founding, with Richard Hickox, of Collegium Musicum 90, he has made numerous acclaimed recordings for Chandos Records.

As soloist and director of chamber orchestras and as a chamber musician, he is active both in Britain and abroad. He is leader of the Salomon String Quartet (founded by him in 1981), which specialises in historical performance of the classical repertoire. He is Professor of Baroque Violin at the Royal Academy of Music in London and the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest.

Kati Debretzeni

Born in Transylvania, Kati studied the violin with Ora Shiran in Israel, and the Baroque violin with Catherine Mackintosh and Walter Reiter at the Royal College of Music in London.

Since the year 2000 she has led the English Baroque Soloists under the direction of John Eliot Gardiner. Her playing can be heard on their recordings of the Bach Cantata Pilgrimage, and on the recently released B Minor Mass and Matthew Passion. In 2008 she was appointed as one of the leaders the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and has worked with Simon Rattle, William Christie, Roger Norrington, Ivan Fischer, Adam Fischer, Robin Ticciati, Emanuelle Haïm, Ottavio Dantone etc. She often appears as soloist and director with the orchestra, and has recorded Vivaldi's Four Seasons. She features as soloist on two versions of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, with the European Brandenburg Ensemble under Trevor Pinnock (Gramophone Award 2007), and with the English Baroque Soloists.

She is a member of Trio Goya whose recent recording of the Beethoven Opus 1 piano trios for Chandos Chaconne was desribed in Early Music Review as "exceptionally satisfying". In demand as guest-leader and director, she has worked with the Academy of Ancient Music, the English Concert, the King's Consort, Arte dei Suonatori (Poland), Victoria Baroque Players (Canada), Barokkanerne (Norway), Amarillis (France), Barokkada and the Jerusalem Baroque Orchestra (Israel). Her most recent recording features concerti by Telemann with Barokkanerne, and was released last year to critical acclaim. She teaches the Baroque and Classical violin at the Royal Conservatory of Music in The Hague.