James Bowman

James Bowman is a model for a whole era of countertenors. A fixture around the operatic and concert phases of Europe because the past due 1960s, he offers produced a lot more than 130 industrial recordings. His unique voice — extremely expressive and vibrant, if not really conventionally gorgeous — is usually well-suited towards the music of Handel, Purcell, and Benjamin Britten, most of whom have already been pillars of his prolific profession. Bowman began performing as an alto chorister in the choirs of Ely Cathedral and Oxford’s New University, where he received levels in education and background. His solo profession began with an effective audition for Benjamin Britten’s British Opera Group in 1967. The composer provided him the function of Oberon in his A Midsummer Night’s Fantasy, and a concert at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall. Bowman continuing to sing Oberon throughout his profession, and produced an excellent documenting of the function for Hyperion in 1990. His association with Britten would continue, aswell; the composer had written the function of Apollo in Death in Venice for him, and in addition devoted his Canticle Simply no. 4 to Bowman. In 1970, Bowman became the first countertenor to sing at Glyndebourne, within a creation of Cavalli’s La calisto. By 1972, he previously also debuted using the British Country wide Opera and Covent Backyard in operas of Handel (Semele) and Peter Maxwell Davies (Taverner). He’d eventually sing a lot of the great Handelian operas, including Xerxes, Giulio Cesare, Orlando, and Rinaldo. Bowman provides premiered several contemporary works, apart from those mentioned previously. He was the first ever to sing the part of Astron in Michael Tippett’s opera The Snow Break, in 1977; he sang Alan Ridout’s Phaeton for BBC Radio; Michael Nyman published his Self-Laudatory Hymn of Inanna and Her Omnipotence for Bowman; and Bowman was the first ever to record John Tavener’s Akathist of Thanksgiving and several functions by Geoffrey Burgon. As an oratorio vocalist, Bowman offers prevailed in standard functions, like Handel’s Messiah and Chandos Anthems, Vivaldi’s Salve Regina, Orff’s Carmina Burana, and Henry Purcell’s Birthday Odes. Purcell’s music is a particular concentrate of his recordings around the Hyperion label, the majority of which were in cooperation with Robert Ruler as well as the King’s Consort. Paris continues to be almost another house to Bowman during his profession, and in acknowledgement of his contribution to Parisian tradition, the government produced him Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1992. He also offered a sold-out 25th wedding anniversary concert in the Palais Garnier that same 12 months.