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The players |
Catch! has two core members:
In addition, the following artists have appeared with Catch!
With Heidi Pegler and Richard Partridge, he is Co-Director of The Loki Ensemble, founded by him at Trinity, which performs baroque cantatas and chamber music on period instruments, and has received many favourable reviews, not least from its performances at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. In 1998 he launched the Kingston Early Music Series, which he developed into the Kingston Early Music Festival the following year.
With a range of television and radio appearances under his belt, his other performing includes: twentieth century recorder music, work with The Consort of Twelve (Chichester’s leading period instrument orchestra), Trinity Baroque (Cambridge), The Essex Baroque Orchestra, performance, arrangement and direction for English Heritage, performance with Quintus, an Elizabethan “Broken Consort”, The Whitehall Consort, which explores late Seventeenth-century Catholic repertoire, and Arlecchino, which performs Italian Seventeenth-century trio and solo sonatas. Related musical interests include rennaisance choral music, reed-cap instruments, and folk music.
He studied conducting with George Hurst and Adrian Leaper, and cello
with Michael Garbutt, and currently with Jane Francis and Susan Sheppard. He
performs mostly chamber music, using the five string cello for
conventional continuo work, as a harmonic continuo instrument, to
explore the repertoire of virtuoso music for viola da gamba, and, of
course, to play modern music and jazz.
This leads to surprising crossovers, such as playing the Mystery
sonatas of Biber on 5-string cello wiht jazz bass “continuo”.
Away from the concert platform, he is active as a composer
and transciber. His transcriptions follow the baroque
practice of adapting works from one instrumental grouping to
another, and recent works include a cello transcription of
J. S. Bach’s Toccata & Fugue in D Minor featured
in a major article in the Autumn 2000 issue of Musical
Times, and available online. His
transcription of the sonata for viola da gamba and
harpsichord in D major by J. S. Bach as a trio sonata
received its first two performances by Catch!
in September 1999.
His Five Mediæval Lyrics are on were on
the
Society for the
Promotion of New Music (SPNM) shortlist 201–2004, and received
their première from the BBC Singers at the
Purcell Room in October 2001.
This ahs been followed by his
Quintet (three recorders, viola da gamba and harpsichord) and
Angels’ Song, both on the 2004–2006 shortlist.
Recent Compositions include a third Osterley Suite for solo clavichord,
and a string quartet movement Fløyen in the Rain
(premiered by the Elysian Quartet at an
SPNM event in December 2004).
His sketch-pad currently has material for a piece for muselar virginals, more
music for solo tenor recorder, a piece on the seasons for three sopranos,
a string quartet and a fourth Osterley suite which
will be for solo cello.
Mark’s web site is at www.MarkArgent.com.
Helena Brown
was brought up in Oxford and won a scholarship to study at Dartington College
of Arts and then at the Royal College of Music, where her professor was Hubert
Dawkes.
After leaving college she worked for the Royal Ballet whilst establishing a career as a harpsichordist and pianist.
Her work includes recitals, recordings ad broadcasts of both baroque and contemporary repertoire, and recently she has enjoyed working as Music Director with Isleworth Actors’ Company, and on a new poetry-with-music project with the baroque ensemble Musica Dolce; this “entertainment” was recently premiered at Brunel University). Other recent ventures include a Jane Austen evening with her duo keyboard partner, Penelope cave.
Patrick Huang
is
a Hongkong-born Canadian, who has sung
professionally in Toronto with Tafelmusik and the
Elmer Iseler Singers. With them he has appeared in
recordings and broadcasts, and has toured the
United States and Canada. As a soloist Patrick has
performed many of Bach’s Cantatas, as well as
the St.
John Passion, St. Matthew Passion, Christmas
Oratorio, and Easter Oratorio;
other works he has
performed include Handel’s Messiah,
Nisi Dominus;
Purcell’s Tempest and Verse Anthems, and
Schütz’s
St. John Passion. He obtained a Bachelor degree in
Italian and German, as well as an Honours Bachelor
degree in Music, Voice Performance at the
University of Toronto. In 1995 he was made a
Fellow of Trinity College, London. He also
attended Britten-Pears School for Advanced Musical
Studies. He has recently obtained his Masters of
Music in Performance from the Royal Academy of
Music, University of London. He currently studies
with Ian Partridge.
Sophie Middleditch
plays flute and recorder, notably with the Parnassian Ensemble.
Janet Oates
has a light soprano voice and specialises in early music and
coloratura. She recently gained a diploma in opera studies from Abbey Opera, and
is currently studying under Geoffrey Thompson and Amerel Gunson.
Melanie Thompson
studied the modern flute at Wells Cathedral School,
and then won a choral scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge,
where she read music. As a member of the Chapel Choir and Chamber Choir
she toured New Zealand, America and Europe, making several recordings
and broadcasts. Since leaving she has taught the modern flute,
broadcast on Radio 3, sung in several operas and set up and acted in
an Amsterdam theatre company. She “discovered” the baroque flute early
in 1996, and has since studied with Janet See and Claire Guimond.
Melanie’s web site is at www.melthompson.cwc.net.
Mark Argent
plays cello, oboe and recorder, and composes.
In 1992 Macmillan published his edition of the
Recollections of the musician
R. J. S. Stevens, which provide a fascinating snapshot of
eighteenth-century British musical life.
Artists who have appeared with Catch!
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