Chorworks

Applications are invited from talented, early-career singers to participate in a week-long workshop ON J S BACH’S SACRED MUSIC: THE MISSA IN A MAJOR, BWV 234, and MOTETS BY THE BACH FAMILY

Philip Cave is a conductor, educator, singer, and the director of Magnificat.

A chorister from the age of seven, Philip studied music at Oxford University with Simon Preston and David Wulstan, and was a founding member of the Tallis Scholars, with whom he gave over 400 performances. He has performed, toured and recorded with most of the UK’s leading vocal ensembles, including the Hilliard Ensemble, The Sixteen, the English Consort, the King's Consort, and with the Choirs of Christ Church, and New College, Oxford. He has participated in over one hundred professional CD recordings.

As a vocal soloist, he has worked with celebrated conductors including Leonard Bernstein, and at venues including the Beethovenhalle in Bonn and the Sydney Opera House. He has performed across Europe, at the BBC Promenade Concerts in London, and has shared the concert platform with many distinguished musicians, including Sir Peter Pears, Sting, and Sir Paul McCartney.

Philip is founder and conductor of the English vocal ensemble Magnificat, which specializes in the restoration and performance of neglected masterworks of the baroque and renaissance periods. The ensemble has toured and performed in England, Spain, Greece and the United States, and has released over a dozen CD recordings, which have attracted much critical acclaim. He is a recipient of the Byrne Award from the London Handel Society, the Noah Greenberg Award from the American Musicological Society, and is an Honorary Fellow of London’s Academy of St. Cecilia.

Philip’s approach to early music is fueled by curiosity and imagination, whether through the restoration of unknown or neglected works, or the reexamination of the familiar. He emphasises (actually, obsesses about) phrasing and textual expression, and with his background as a singer, encourages the use of vocal colours, timbres, and both bold and subtle nuances.

He is the founder of Chorworks, whose concerts and workshops bring together distinguished faculty and performers to increase the knowledge of early choral repertoire and performing techniques. As Conductor-in-Residence at Duke Chapel, Philip directs choral ensembles and the annual Bach Cantata Series.

Now based in the USA, Philip directs choral ensembles at Duke University Chapel and is Executive Director of Chorworks, a non-profit organization that provides singers and conductors with the opportunity to study and perform choral music from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and is still trying to understand the difference between a biscuit and a scone.