London the European
Come join us in an exploration of 17th and 18th London as a bustling musical capital of Europe.
London has always been a vibrant and exciting place where musicians from all over Europe have congregated to make music in its many theatres and performance spaces.
This programme takes you through the music performed in London’s famous coffee house concerts through to Handels opera theatres.
Music by Sammartini, Corelli, Gemminiani, Handel, Castrucci and others.
Portuguese-born Lisete da Silva Bull studied baroque flute and recorder at the Royal Academy of Music and now performs, records and broadcasts with many of the leading period-instrument groups and orchestras in the UK, including the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Solomon’s Knot, Ex-Cathedra the Handel Orchestra and the acclaimed Brook Street Band, of which she is a core member.
She is also highly sought after as a teacher and lecturer presenting lectures and masterclasses in Brazil, Slovenia, Portugal, Hull and Birmingham Universities, and the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. She has recently been appointed professor of recorder and baroque flute at the newly established London Performing Academy of Music and is now baroque flute teacher at Birmingham University.
Lisete has recorded for Naxos, Quartz, Somme, Avie and First Hand records. She has been interviewed and performed in various international radio and TV stations, in Spain, Slovenia and other countries including Germany’s Deutsche Welle and BBC Radio 2 and 3. Lisete has recorded for various film and TV soundtracks over the years.
Her long standing love of French Baroque and Rameau has taken her to PhD research with Graham Saddler and Shirley Thompson and she has published articles in various respected publications in Holland and the U.K.
Robin Walker began his musical journey as a chorister at Ripon Cathedral. After school he spent a gap year as organ scholar at Blackburn cathedral before studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London. After postgraduate studies at RAM he began a career combining church music, concert performance and teaching.
Robin is the organ teacher at The King’s Canterbury, and an Accredited teacher for the Royal College of Organists. He conducts Cantate chamber choir in Sevenoaks and their sister period instrument chamber orchestra Vivace!
As a church musician he has held posts in London, Florence (Italy), and was for a year Assistant Organist at Canterbury Cathedral. He is organist for the Icelandic church in London. Robin has led the restoration of two historic instruments; the 1558 Zefferini organ in the Badia Fiorentina, and the 1734 organ of St Giles-in-the-Fields church in central London.
Concerts and teaching have led to travelling far and wide, with tours to the USA, across Europe, and to Hong Kong and New Zealand. He has made a number of critically acclaimed recordings, and has featured on BBC and commercial radio and television both here and abroad.