Sonnerie is a Baroque chamber music ensemble led by David Owen Norris, featuring Monica Huggett, Emilia Benjamin and Josph Crouch.
Performance note: the Concerto in D (K107), was arranged in 1772 by Mozart, originally composed by JC Bach in 1766. On this recording, this piece (tracks 9-11) are performed on Mozart's own instrument, built in 1777, and signed on the soundboard by JC Bach!
David Owen Norris studied at the Royal Academy of Music, and with Yvonne Lefebure in Paris. He was Organ Scholar at Keble College, Oxford, where he gained First Class Honours in Music. He taught for many years at the Academy and is now professor of vocal accompaniment at the Royal College of Music and Research Fellow in Creative Arts at Southampton University. His appointment as the first Gilmore Artist in 1991 led to a busy international solo career that has taken him to the United States, Canada, Australia and most parts of Europe. A highly versatile musician, Mr. Norris has in the course of his career been a repetiteur at the Royal Opera House, harpist with the Royal Shakespeare Company, Artistic Director of the Cardiff Festival, Gresham Professor of Music in London and Chairman of the Steans Institute for Singers at the Ravinia Festival in Chicago. He has made innumerable programmes for BBC television and radio, both as pianist and presenter. His CD of the solo piano music of Elgar is released by Elgar Editions simultaneously with this CD of the World's First Piano Concertos.
Monica Huggett was born in London, and studied at the Royal Academy of Music. She quickly became known as a specialist in baroque music and was invited, with Ton Koopman, to form the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra where she was concertmaster from 1980-87. Over the past thirty years she has worked for most of the major European baroque orchestras and their directors. In the UK her work centres on her ensemble Sonnerie, which has recently released CDs of Mozart Piano Quartets and Biber Violin Sonatas on ASV. She also occasionally plays nineteenth century repertoire with Hausmusik, and recently recorded a CD of Brahms chamber music with them for GMN/Signum. She spends part of each year in the USA, where she is the Artistic Director of Portland Baroque Orchestra in Oregon. In the past year she has been guest director of the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra, the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, Israel Camerata, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Ensemble Arion Montreal and Tafelmusik Toronto.
Emilia Benjamin took a degree in History of Art at the University of East Anglia before studying viola da gamba with Sarah Cunningham and baroque violin with Micaela Comberti at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. She then spent a year at the Brussels Conservatoire with Wieland Kuijken. Emilia is a core member of Sonnerie, playing gamba, violin and viola. Her other principal groups are the viol consort Concordia and The Early Opera Company.
Joseph Crouch began his musical education as a chorister at Westminster Abbey, and was later a Choral Scholar at Kings College, Cambridge. He studied Baroque Cello at the Royal Academy of Music with Jennifer Ward Clarke. After graduating in 2000, Joseph was invited to join the European Union Baroque Orchestra. Since then, he has performed, toured and recorded with most of Britain's leading period instrument orchestras. He joined Sonnerie in the summer of 2002.
Home
