Claire Tomlin studied singing at the Royal College of Music with Kathleen Livingston, where she passed with distinction. She made her London debut at St John's, Smith Square, in 2001, and has since performed frequently as a soloist at most of the top performance venues in the country, including the Wigmore Hall, Purcell Room, Queen Elizabeth Hall and Royal Festival Hall. She has an extensive oratorio repertoire, having sung with numerous choral societies throughout Britain. Claire has been a soloist on many CD recordings and has been broadcast many times on radio programmes such as In Tune and The Early Music Show. She frequently appears on Songs of Praise. An equally experienced choral singer, she has toured most of Europe with leading groups including the Monteverdi Choir with Sir John Eliot Gardiner, the Sixteen with Harry Christophers and Ex Cathedra Consort with Jeffrey Skidmore. Claire has been a soloist for the Suffolk Villages Festival for many years and is the principal soprano at St James’s Church, Paddington.

Emma Bishton performs regularly in the region, as a soloist with the Baroque chamber ensemble The Delightful Companions, as a member of Psalmody and of the Marenzio singers (a five-part madrigal group), along with other solo and choral commitments. She focuses particularly on early and contemporary repertoire, and is a long-standing member of the New London Chamber Choir, which specialises in performances of contemporary music at home and abroad.

Peter Holman founded the pioneering early music group Ars Nova while a student. He is now director of The Parley of Instruments, the choir Psalmody, Essex Baroque Orchestra, and Leeds Baroque. As the founder and director of the Suffolk Villages Festival he is a leading figure in the musical life of East Anglia. He is Emeritus Professor of Historical Musicology at the University of Leeds, and is a regular broadcaster on BBC Radios 3 and 4. He spends much of his time researching old music and writing about it, and has special interests in the history of stringed instruments, in instrumental ensemble music of the Renaissance and Baroque, and in English music from about 1550 to 1850. His latest book, Life after Death: the Viola da Gamba in Britain from Purcell to Dolmetsch, was published in 20 I 0. At present he is writing a book, Performing Seventeenth-Century Music, and working on a study of conducting and musical direction in Georgian Britain. Peter was awarded an MBE for Services to Early Music in January 2015.

Louise Jameson took up the cello at the age of 7 having been inspired to do so by Mark Caudle and further encouraged by Jacqueline du Pré’s recording of the Elgar Cello Concerto and the Augustus John portrait of Madame Suggia! She was a member of the Colchester Youth Chamber Orchestra, Essex Youth Orchestra, Hamburg Youth Orchestra and Leeds University Symphony Orchestra. Having spent her teenage years playing predominantly 19th and 20th century music on the cello she began to be drawn back to earlier repertoire and joined the newly-formed Essex Baroque Orchestra in 1988. She studied German & Italian at Leeds University but spent most of her free time with her friends in the Music Department and was allowed to join the beginner viol consort class and borrow a treble viol. She currently plays cello and bass violin in Essex Baroque Orchestra, Linden Baroque Orchestra and Suffolk Baroque Players and treble viol in the John Jenkins Consort. She is a freelance music administrator and has worked with groups and organisations such as St James’ Baroque, Polyphony, Collegium Musicum 90, Trevor Pinnock’s European Brandenburg Ensemble, the Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music, Cambridge Early Music and the Suffolk Villages Festival.