Greg Skidmore - Baritone: Greg Skidmore

Greg Skidmore - Baritone

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Greg Skidmore

baritone - conductor

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Conducting, Tutoring, and Workshops

In May 2018, I founded The Canadian Renaissance Music Summer School (CRMSS), a week-long residential singing course in Canada aimed primarily, but not exclusively, at undergraduate students, graduates, and young professional singers. CRMSS is dedicated to the study and performance of Renaissance polyphonic vocal music at the highest levels and its patron is Peter Philips, director of The Tallis Scholars. (crmss.org)
Since September 2014, I have been Musical Director of The Lacock Scholars, London-based group of young singers drawn together through Lacock Courses. We specialise in Renaissance polyphony and site-specific performances, incorporating seamless presentations of polyphony, plainsong, madrigals, chansons, and secular song from the 16th and 17th centuries. (www.lacockscholars.org)
I have given day-long workshops for the Brighton Consort, Renaissance Singers, and Friends of I Fagiolini.
I directed The Corsham Winter School, a Lacock Course for amateur singers from around the world specialising in Renaissance polyphonic music, which took place in December 2015.
Renaissance Consort Masterclass tutor in Roujan, France on a course for amateur singers organised by Francis Steele with co-tutors Robert Hollingworth and Anthony Rooley.
Vocal Ensembles Course tutor at Dartington International Summer School with Ex Cathedra and I Fagiolini.
Regular series of workshops with the Byfleet Singers in Box, Wiltshire so far specialising in the music of Palestrina, Victoria, Lassus, Byrd, and Tallis.
Workshops with 'Six Vocal Ensemble' based in London, Canada, and further work as vocal producer on their second album recorded in Helsinki in July 2012.
Workshop with 'The Island Singers' of Manitoulin Island, Ontario, Canada.
In September 2013 I led a workshop with The Thames Scholars, a small chamber choir specialising in Early Music at Western University in London, Ontario, Canada.
In 2009, I founded the men's voice polyphony ensemble 'I Dedicati', made up of Lay Clerks and choral scholars at the University of Oxford as well as other professional singers from the south of England. With them I have conducted Richafort's Requiem, and music by Isaac, Brumel, Schütz, Lassus, Mundy, and more. I conducted the entirety of Byrd and Tallis' 1575 collection Cantiones Sacrae over three consecutive evenings in three different Oxford college chapels and an expanded I Dedicati performed Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610 with an ensemble of sackbutts and cornets.

Biography

Born in Canada, Greg Skidmore arrived in England as an undergraduate at Royal Holloway College, University of London. After graduating with First Class Honours in Music, his post-graduate Choral Scholarship at Wells Cathedral led him to Lay Clerkships at Gloucester Cathedral and Christ Church Cathedral in Oxford. He now lives in London and pursues a varied career as a consort, choral, and solo oratorio singer alongside his growing commitments as a conductor and workshop leader.

Greg is one of the UK’s leading consort and choral singers, having appeared with The Tallis Scholars, The Sixteen, The Cardinall's Musick, I Fagiolini, Tenebrae, The Gabrieli Consort, Alamire, Contrapunctus, The Eric Whitacre Singers, EXAUDI, Collegium Vocale Ghent, Ensemble L’Arpeggiata, Cappella Amsterdam, La Grand Chapelle (Madrid), and the Tafelmusik Baroque Chamber Choir (Toronto), and others. He can be heard on discs released by Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, Harmonia Mundi USA, and others, including Alamire’s recent Gramophone Early Music Award winning disc, ‘The Spy’s Choirbook’ and The Tallis Scholars’ final recording in their Josquin Masses series, ‘Missa Hercules Dux Ferrarie, Missa D'ung aultre amer & Missa Faysant regretz’, which also won a Gramophone Early Music Award. In 2015, he featured in I Fagiolini’s Betrayal, a fully staged presentation of the madrigals and sacred music of Carlo Gesualdo, and in 2019 I Fagiolini toured their recent recording project Leonardo: Shaping the invisible extensively in the UK and abroad. During the pandemic, he featured in all of the Voces8 LiveFromLondon festivals, with I Fagiolini and the Voces8 Foundation Choir. Recent highlights have included performances with actress Tamsin Grieg as part of I Fagiolini’s Re-Wilding the Waste Land project and singing in his hundredth concert with The Tallis Scholars.

Solo engagements have included working with ballet dancer Carlos Acosta in his A Classical Farewell at the Royal Albert Hall; Handel’s Messiah with the Irish Baroque Orchestra; Purcell’s Ode for St Cecilia's Day with the Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment; Purcell's Fairy Queen with the Gabrieli Consort at the Spitalfields Festival; and Monterverdi’s 1610 Vespers at the Brighton Early Music Festival, and with I Fagiolini and the BBC Singers at the Barbican Centre’s Milton Court Concert Hall. A recent Ex Cathedra CD release of Alec Roth’s oratorio A Time to Dance features Greg in a role written for him.

While at Christ Church in Oxford, he began a course of doctoral research in Musicology at the University of Oxford and started his own men’s voices consort, I Dedicati. More recently he was appointed Musical Director of The Lacock Scholars and has performed throughout the UK with them, including ongoing engagements at Westminster Abbey. In August 2021, he was appointed Musical Director of Brighton Consort and in 2023 is presenting a full year of concerts honouring the 400th anniversary of the death of William Byrd. Greg recently completed major coaching projects with students at the University of York and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and has begun coaching work at the Royal Academy of Music. He has given workshops and masterclasses in the UK, France, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia in association with The Sixteen, I Fagiolini, and on his own. In 2015, he led The Corsham Winter School, and has worked with Eamonn Dougan, Associate Conductor of The Sixteen, and Justin Doyle, Chief Conductor of RIAS Kammerchor, as Assistant Director of the Ludlow Summer School. He is increasingly engaged in Canada as a guest conductor, clinician, and record producer, founding The Canadian Renaissance Music Summer Schools in 2018. 2023 sees an expansion of his work in Canada with the organisation, with two courses running this summer. He has been published in Early Music and his writing has appeared in programmes and CD liner notes for The Tallis Scholars, The Sixteen, The Cardinall’s Musick, The Gabrieli Consort, Tenebrae, and Ex Cathedra.

Download Greg Skidmore's biography and CV. Photographs can be downloaded in the Gallery section of this website.

Past Events

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2013

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Recordings information

2013 demo material

The first five recordings were made on 18 April 2013 at St John-at-Hampstead Parish Church in London. This was a private session in which only these five tracks were recorded. They now serve as my current demo material. I was accompanied on the piano by Matthew Martin and Dave Hinitt produced, engineered, and edited these recordings. Matthew Martin is one of the UK's most exciting young composers and you can learn more about his work here.

Jacob's Ladder, arranged by Stephen Darlington

This recording comes from a disc entitled 'Treasures of Christ Church' and was recorded by Christ Church Cathedral Choir in Merton College, Oxford in March 2011. It was released for sale in November 2011 and more information, including a link to purchase the CD on iTunes, can be found on the Christ Church Cathedral Choir website here. This recording is made available by permission.

Wolf's 'Benedeit'

I recorded this piece during a live recital which took place at Christ Church Cathedral in Oxford on the 29th of May, 2010. Soprano Emily Atkinson and I gave a complete performance of Hugo Wolf's Italienisches Liederbuch, equally sharing its 46 songs. We were accompanied by James Martin. There has been no editing and the equipment used was not of the highest standard.

Bach's St Matthew Passion

Another live recording, this track comes from a performance in Symphony Hall, Birmingham on Good Friday, 10 April 2009. Ex Cathedra performs either Bach's St Matthew Passion or Bach's St John Passion every year on Good Friday and on this occasion it was recorded live in concert and released for sale. In this performance, a new English translation by Nicholas Fisher and John Russell was premiered. Ex Cathedra (www.excathedra.co.uk) and Orchid Classics (www.orchidclassics.com) have graciously agreed to allow me to post this on my website. Please do visit them on the web, where you can purchase the CD. Ex Cathedra - St Matthew Passion : Orchid Classics - Ex Cathedra St Matthew Passion.

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Academic scholarships and awards:

Bach

Handel

Purcell

Other Oratorio

Dowland

Schubert

Fauré

Duparc

Other song

2013 demo material

Jacob's Ladder, arranged by Stephen Darlington

Wolf's 'Benedeit'

Bach's St Matthew Passion