Conductors
Owen Rees
Owen Rees is a Reader in the Faculty of Music, Fellow, Tutor and Organist of The Queen’s College, and Senior Research Fellow of Somerville College.
Born in 1964, he read music at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, where he held an Organ Scholarship. His postgraduate research was likewise undertaken at Cambridge, under the supervision of Peter le Huray and Iain Fenlon, and he completed his doctorate in 1991. He was Lecturer in Music at St Peter’s College and St Edmund Hall, Oxford, 1989-1991, and then Lecturer and — from 1996 — Reader in the Department of Music at the University of Surrey. He took up his current posts in Oxford in 1997, and was promoted to reader in 2006.
He is active as both scholar and performer, and these two areas of his work inform one another. His research is concerned principally with music from 1450 to 1650, particularly in Spain and Portugal, and in England. His monograph on the largest surviving collection of early Portuguese musical sources — from the Monastery of Santa Cruz in Coimbra — deals both with Portuguese repertories and with cultural and musical connections between Portugal and other countries. He has edited music by three of the most important Portuguese composers of the period, Manuel Cardoso, Pedro de Cristo and Duarte Lobo. His published work on Spanish music has included studies of the works of Cristóbal de Morales and Francisco Guerrero, including issues of emulation. He has also written on the sacred music of William Byrd.
His research is frequently reflected in the performances and recordings of the various vocal groups which he directs:Contrapunctus, The Choir of The Queen’s College, and The Cambridge Taverner Choir. With these groups he has released recordings on the Hyperion, Guild, and Herald labels, including six recordings of Portuguese polyphony by Manuel Cardoso, Duarte Lobo, Pedro de Cristo, and other composers. He presents numerous concerts with these groups, in the UK and abroad, each year. Recent festival appearances include: Oslo Kirchenmusic Festival, Festival International “Portico de Semana Santa de Zamora”, and the York Early Music Festival. As Organist of The Queen’s College, he directs the Choir in its provision of music at chapel services (three each week during termtime), concerts, tours, and recordings.
His Faculty teaching at Oxford has included many areas of Renaissance music, as well as historical performance practice and choral conducting. Recent undergraduate topics have included Music and the Protestant Reformations to c. 1630 and Music in the Iberian World, 1492-1650. At Queen’s and Somerville he teaches many areas of the undergraduate course, including historical topics, techniques of stylistic composition, analysis, and keyboard skills. He has supervised postgraduate dissertations on a wide range of topics, particularly within the fields of Renaissance and Baroque music.
Pedro Teixeira
He obtained his master's degree in choral direction from the Lisbon School of Music, where he worked with Maestro Vasco Pearce de Azevedo and Paulo Lourenço. He was a teacher at the Lisbon School of Education, teaching Vocal Education and Choir Direction, in the course Music in the Community. He was a member of the Gregorian Choir of Lisbon, where he was a soloist. He was also a singer at the Gulbenkian Choir, where he served as guest assistant conductor. He directs the Ricercare Choir, where he worked with Paulo Lourenço as assistant conductor, becoming full conductor in 2002; is artistic director of the Vocal Officium Group;
He is artistic director of the «International Days School of Music of the Évora Cathedral», an organization of Eboræ Musica - Musical Association of Évora, which already has twenty-one annual editions. In 2002 he received the award “The most promising conductor of Tonen 2002” in the Netherlands. At the international level, he has been conducting since 2011 in Barcelona, together with Peter Philips, Ivan Moody and Jordi Abelló, the workshop «Victoria400», a choir singing studio dedicated to Spanish, Portuguese and Orthodox Renaissance and contemporary music. From 2012 to 2018, he was titular conductor of the Choir of the Comunidad de Madrid.
Joana Nascimento
Joana Nascimento studied singing at the National Conservatory School of Music with Manuela de Sá. Later she worked with Liliana Bizineche and Susana Teixeira. As a Gulbenkian Foundation fellow, she studied at the Trinity College of Music in London under the guidance of Hazel Wood. Attended further training courses with Jill Feldman, Peter Harvey, Peter Harrison, Helmut Lips, Marius van Altena, Max van Egmond, Martyn Hill, Iris dell'Acqua, Omar Ebrahim, Ian Pastridge, Dorothy Dorow, Robert Tear and Ron Murdock. others.
As a soloist, he sang works by Monteverdi, Vivaldi, Bach, Händel, Pergolesi, Mozart (among others, Requiem, at the CCB Grand Auditorium), Haydn, Mendelssohn, Beethoven, Rossini, Saint-Saëns, Bruckner, Vaughan Williams, Honegger, Stockhausen. and Louis Andriessen (under the 26th Gulbenkian Encounters of Contemporary Music). She played Pastore in the opera L'Orfeo de Monteverdi, Joaz in the opera of the same name as Benedetto Marcello, Fatima in the opera Zaira de Marcos Portugal (modern premiere at the Gulbenkian Foundation Grand Auditorium), Strawberry Woman in the Porgy and Bess de Gershwin, and Mrs. Noye at Britten's Noye's Fludde opera. He performed with the Gulbenkian Orchestra at the Festival ao Largo (initiative of the São Carlos National Theater) performing El Amor Brujo by Manuel de Falla. In recital, he performed with pianists Helena Rodrigues, João Crisóstomo and Nicholas McNair.
He is a founding member of the vocal group Voces Caelestes. Collaborates regularly with the vocal group Officium and the Gulbenkian Choir. As a soloist, she participated in the CD A Chapel of King Magnânimo for the PortugalSom label, with music by Francisco António de Almeida and Domenico Scarlatti. As part of his collaboration with the group Vozes Alfonsinas, specializing in the medieval and renaissance repertoire, he recorded the CD O Tempo dos Trovadores, published by PortugalSom. He also performs as a soloist on the 17th Century CD Vilancicos Negros (Choir Gulbenkian, directed by Maestro Jorge Matta), released by Portugaler. Parallel to his artistic work, he develops intense activity in the field of voice pedagogy.
Nicholas McNair
Nicholas McNair - Teacher at ESML since 1988. Teaches UCs Singing Repertoire, Corruption, Sheet Music Reading, Harmonization and Piano Improvisation, Organ Improvisation, Auditory Training for Singers, and Instrumental Improvisation Group (option). Member of the Canterbury Cathedral Choir (head 1964), studied piano, organ and composition, having diplomas from the Royal College of Organists and Royal College of Music (London), and a Master of Arts degree from Cambridge University.
Fernando Pérez Valera
Fernando Pérez Valera is a player of different historic wind instruments (cornet, sackbut, shawm, dulcian, recorder, crumhorn, etc... in fact, wind renaissance instruments.). Since 1998 he co-founded the ministrels Ensemble La Danserye, playing around Spain, and other countries in Europe and South America developing mainly revisiting programs of hispanoamerican musical repertoire, some of which have been recorded. Since 2013 he is co-founder of Capella Prolationum.
Paulo Lourenço
PhD in Choral Conducting by the University of Cincinatti. At Present he is a Professor at Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa where he coordinates the Master’s degree in Choral Conducting. He is Assistant Conductor of Gulbenkian Choir. He is very often invited by Universities and other Institutions from America, Asia and Portugal to coordinate Master-Classes and Conferences when he spreads Portuguese music and composers. He has been presented in several countries as invited conductor or with his own groups all around Europe, America and Asia.
Sónia Duarte
Sónia da Silva Duarte is doing a PhD in Art History about Music Iconography in Portugal with the title «Images of Music in Baroque Portuguese Paintings in Portugal (1600-1750)», University of Lisboa. This doctoral project was awarded a research Grant of Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia. She works simultaneously as a researcher of ARTIS – Instituto de História da Arte, as a researcher of CESEM – Centro de Estudos de Sociologia e Estética Musical and with the department of Musicology of Universidad Complutense de Madrid in the inventory and study of images of Saint Cecilia in Portugal and Spain. She also holds a Master in Musicology about Music Iconography in Renaissance Portuguese Paintings (2012).
