La Nuova Musica
biography
“…one of the most exciting consorts in the Early Music field" Lucy Skeaping, BBC Radio 3
La Nuova Musica is a vocal and instrumental ensemble dedicated to the music of the European Renaissance and Baroque. In less than five years since its foundation by counter-tenor David Bates, it has shot to prominence in the UK and abroad. Already a regular guest at the foremost Early Music venues and festivals, including King’s Place, Wigmore Hall and the Aldeburgh, Spitalfields and London Handel festivals, La Nuova Musica is establishing itself amongst critics and audiences as both a fixture and a breath of fresh air. In 2011, the ensemble signed a five-record deal with renowned record label harmonia mundi USA.
Across a steadily developing repertoire, La Nuova Musica performances are characterised by vividness and ardour. The Times wrote of its 2009 performance of Handel’s Acis and Galatea at the London Handel Festival: “[Bates] breathed life, meaning and shape into every phrase. His speeds were properly brisk and his little band responded with playing of robust vigour.” At the 2009 Aldeburgh Easter Festival, meanwhile, the group’s interpretation of Schütz’s Musikalische Exequien proved in the words of the Eastern Daily Press “to be one of the sensations of the weekend…effortlessly sung.” Most recently, The Times again pronounced itself thrilled by La Nuova Musica’s account of Handel’s Messiah at the Spitalfields Winter Festival 2011: “this was to be music-making of an undogmatic, long-pondered intelligence, generously yet undistractingly ornamented, and with the small band minutely sensitive to its interplay with the human voice.” La Nuova Musica also performed Messiah at its debut performance at St George’s Bristol, drawing a standing ovation and glowing reviews.
2012 is La Nuova Musica’s most ambitious year yet. In April, the group will launch its maiden CD on harmonia mundi USA, a world-premiere on record of the 1712 version of Handel’s opera Il Pastor Fido, at a special concert at St George’s, Hanover Square as part of the London Handel Festival. In June, La Nuova Musica hosts a curatorship at Kings Place entitled A Deeper Tyde, featuring two concert performances of Monteverdi’s proto-opera L’Orfeo and a recital by special guest soprano Rosemary Joshua of ‘mad songs and laments’. Also in June and in partnership with Vignette Productions, La Nuova Musica will present ‘Sacrifices’ at the Spitalfields Festival: a daring and ambitious contemporary staging of two trailblazing early Baroque oratorios. This last project will form the basis for a third recording project for harmonia mundi USA. The second, featuring Dixit Dominus-es by Handel and Vivaldi and the latter’s virtuosic soprano cantata In Furore Iustissimae (to be sung by guest artist Lucy Crowe), will go to studio in March.
©La Nuova Musica, January 2012
David Bates, director
biography
“La Nuova Musica… a handful of singers firmly in the grip of their brilliant young music master, David Bates”
David Bates studied voice at the Royal Academy of Music in London and subsequently embarked on a professional singing career. A versatile performer with an equal passion for stage work and concert performance, he has appeared at Glyndebourne Opera and English National Opera as well as making regular appearances as consort member and soloist with the English Baroque Soloists and Monteverdi Choir under Sir John Eliot Gardiner.
Always keen to explore and expose himself to unfamiliar interpretative techniques and performance styles, David has worked extensively abroad. He has sung and recorded Purcell’s Ode to St Cecilia with Mark Minkowski and Les Musiciens du Louvre and has appeared at the Theater Basel, Switzerland, under the direction of Andrea Marcon, and at the Göttingen International Handel Festival under Nicholas McGegan.
In 2007, inspired by these many experiences, David founded his own ensemble, La Nuova Musica. The group aims to bring a new generation of talented young performers to the fore, to reanimate familiar repertoire with a new spirit, and to reintroduce audiences in the UK and Europe to forgotten or neglected treasures. The group is already a recognised presence, established according to BBC3 as “one of the most exciting consorts in the early music field.”
