The Brook Street Band
Biographie The Brook Street Band
The Brook Street Band
takes its name from the London street where composer George Frideric Handel lived from 1723-1759. The Band was formed in 1996 by baroque cellist Tatty Theo and rapidly established itself as one of the UK’s leading Handel specialists, winning grants, awards and broadcasting opportunities from various organisations including BBC Radio 3 and the Handel Institute. Eighteenth-century chamber repertoire has always been the Band’s driving passion, focusing particularly on Handel’s music. However, in recent years the Band’s activities have also expanded to include regular collaborations with conductors, choirs and venues on larger-scale Handel vocal works.
The past 20 years have seen The Brook Street Band perform and teach extensively at many of the most prestigious British and European Festivals, including Dartington International Summer School, Barcelona Early Music Festival and Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival. As The Band looks to its next decade, The Band’s regular British concert venues continue to include Wigmore Hall, St. John’s Smith Square and The Maltings, Snape. It has recently set up its own music festival in Norfolk, love: Handel, working with young people in schools, and extending its concert links within this community. The inaugural festival took place in April 2017.
In addition to performing 18th-century music, The Brook Street Band is committed to developing new repertoire. It has an ongoing Handelian collaboration with several authors and librettists including Louis de Bernières and Alasdair Middleton, fusing newly-commissioned prose with Handel’s music. The wide-ranging educational work of The Band is supported through The Brook Street Band Trust (Registered Charity No.1122890), focusing in particular on Handel’s life and music, linking this to wide areas of the national curriculum and working with schools across the UK. The Band’s recent flagship education project ‘Getting a Handle on Handel’ resulted in the commission of a new community oratorio, Il Pastorale, L’Urbino e Il Suburbano by composer Matthew King, in response to Handel’s L’Allegro, Il Penseroso ed Il Moderato.
The Brook Street Band regularly broadcasts for BBC Radio 3 and its extensive discography for AVIE has been singled out to critical acclaim with accolades including Gramophone Magazine Editor’s Choice, as well as CD features on both BBC Radio and Classic FM.
