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George Guest is generally regarded among the finest British choral conductors of his time. Some musicologists have attributed the endurance, if not the very survival, of the English cathedral choir to him. He made more than 60 recordings with St. John's Choir (Cambridge), covering a broad range of repertory (Palestrina and Mozart to Tippett and Lennox Berkeley) and garnering consistent critical acclaim.

Guest was born in Bangor, Wales, on February 19, 1924. He attended the Friars school in his hometown and became a chorister by age 9 at the local cathedral. At 11 he sang in the choir at Chester Cathedral while taking private lessons to develop his keyboard skills. After serving four years in the Royal Air Force during World War II, he returned to Chester Cathedral as sub-organist in 1946. The following year he enrolled at St. John's under an organ scholarship, studying with Thurston Dart and Boris Ord. In 1951 the choir director, Robin Orr, resigned to focus on composition, leaving the post to Guest.

In the coming years, Guest, not least because of a healthy rivalry with David Willcocks who was director of the Choir of King's College, vastly improved St. John's choral standards. Beginning in the mid-'50s, Guest and his choir began appearing regularly on radio broadcasts, and in 1958 he made his first recording with the group, Mendelssohn's Hear My Prayer, for the English label Argo. At Cambridge he became a lecturer in 1956, then the university's organist in 1974. In the mid-'70s Guest's growing interest in French music yielded two acclaimed recordings, the Duruflé Requiem and a collection of Fauré works. In 1978 Guest was elected president of the Royal College of Organists, serving in the post for two years. He retired from university lecturing in 1982, but continued his work with St. John's Choir, both in concert and on recordings, as well as in performances abroad. In 1991 Guest retired both from his directorship of St. John's Choir and from his organ post. He died on November 20, 2002.

After beginning her career as a soprano, Felicity Palmer began to attract the attention of many leading conductors and was assigned important roles for live performance and recordings. Although appealing in works of the Baroque and Classical periods, Palmer came to evidence increasing strain in the top register. This factor prompted her to move to mezzo-soprano roles, a process that gave her singing a previously unexplored freedom and tonal sheen. Subsequently, the singer enjoyed an even greater breadth in the repertory she was engaged to perform and demonstrated a healthy longevity, singing Wagner at the Metropolitan Opera in her late fifties. After entering London's Guildhall School of Music in 1962, Palmer studied at that institution until 1967, following which she worked with soprano Marianne Schech at the Hochschule für Musik in Munich. Thereafter, she studied privately with Vera Rozsa at her studio in London. At first, Palmer was a choral singer, performing with the John Alldis Choir and London's Purcell Consort. When she won first prize in the 1970 Kathleen Ferrier Memorial Scholarship competition, however, she found herself launched upon a solo career. After appearing in a performance of Purcell's Dioclesian at Queen Elisabeth Hall in London, she made her operatic debut singing the same composer's Dido in a 1971 production with the Kent Opera. By 1973, she had made her American debut singing the Countess in Le nozze di Figaro with the Houston Opera. Two years later, she appeared with the English National Opera in London as Pamina. Within the decade following her debut, Palmer had amassed performances with such prominent conductors as Pierre Boulez, Andrew Davis, Colin Davis, Lawrence Foster, Bernard Haitink, Raymond Leppard, Charles Mackerras, John Pritchard, and Karl Richter. Subsequently, Palmer has won affirmative notices for her broad repertory, extending from Bach to Gilbert & Sullivan, from Handel to Wagner. Engagements made her an international artist, taking her to most of Europe and the United States, the Mideast, and South America. She appeared at the 1985 Glyndebourne Festival as Florence in Britten's Albert Herring. At Salzburg, she appeared for the first time as alto soloist in Handel's Messiah in 1992. Palmer has sung with success at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, making an especially strong impression as a touching Baba the Turk.

A world-class opera singer and recitalist, tenor Philip Langridge was in great demand as a performer of a wide range of operatic works, particulalry music by Britten, Janácek, and Stravinsky. Praised for his bright and penetrating voice, Langridge was a singer whose impressive vocal strength did not diminish the clarity of his diction. Born in Kent, Langridge studied at the London Royal Academy of Music, where his teachers were Celia Bizony and Bruce Boyce. He worked his way up the professional ladder, from his first appearance as a Footman in Richard Strauss' Capriccio at Glyndebourne. Not long after his debut at Glyndenbourne, he appeared there in the leading roles of Don Ottavio in Mozart's Don Giovanni, Florestan in Beethoven's Fidelio, and Laca in Janácek's Jenufa. Langridge's Covent Garden debut in 1983 combined Ravel's L'enfant et les sortilèges, where he was the Teapot, and Stravinsky's Nightingale, where he sang the role of the Fisherman. In 1985, he debuted at the Metropolitan as Ferrando in Mozart's Così fan tutte, and his first Salzburg appearance was in the role of Aron in Schoenberg's Moses und Aron. Langridge went on to record the role of Aron for the Decca release of the opera under Georg Solti, a production that won a Grammy Award. Langridge frequently sang the title role in two major Stravinsky operas, Oedipus Rex and The Rake's Progress. He appeared in a production of Oedipus Rex conducted by Seiji Ozawa, which won a Japanese award for best opera production 1994. His portrayal of Zivny in Janácek's one-act opera Osud (Fate), recorded for EMI with Charles Mackerras, brought Langridge the 1984 Olivier Award. He also sang the role of Laca in Janácek's Jenufa, appearing as Albert Gregor in The Makropulos Case. Especially appreciated as an interpreter of Benjamin Britten's music, Langridge sang the title roles in Britten operas Peter Grimes, Billy Budd, Turn of the Screw, and Death in Venice. Langridge received two awards for his performances of Britten: a Gramophone Award for War Requiem and a Classic CD Award for Turn of the Screw. An enthusiastic performer of contemporary British music, he premiered several works by British composers, including Birtwistle's The Mask of Orpheus and Tippett's New Year. Langridge sang other important 20th century roles, including Andres in Berg's Wozzeck, Mark in Tippett's Midsummer Marriage, and Edrisi in Szymanowski's King Roger. However, his repertoire encompassed Baroque and Romantic opera: he sang Nerone in Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea; Shuisky in Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov; Loge in Wagner's Das Rheingold; and Benedict in Berlioz's Béatrice et Bénédict. As a recitalist, Langridge performed with world-class pianists, including Maurizio Pollini and Andras Schiff. A tour of Schubert's song cycle Winterreise, with pianist David Owens Norris, was completed by a highly acclaimed performance at the Salzburg Mozarteum. Langridge was married to mezzo-soprano Ann Murray. A recipient of many honors, Langridge became a Commander of the British Empire in 1994 and was an avid collector of watercolors.

Before the emergence of David Daniels as a countertenor superstar, Paul Esswood alone offered a rounded, settled, womanly sound spun around a firm, even vibrato. He quickly made his way among conductors who appreciated both his conscientious musicianship and beautiful sound. His now-legendary series of Bach recordings made with Nikolaus Harnoncourt in the 1970s still gives much pleasure even though Baroque-period performing styles have evolved since then. Esswood trained at the Royal Academy of Music from 1961, studying under baritone Gordon Clinton. Beginning in 1964, he was a lay vicar at Westminster Abbey, remaining in that position until 1971. During that same period, several significant debuts took place; his first professional performance took place in a 1965 broadcast of the Messiah with conductor Charles Mackerras (with whom he later recorded the work) and in 1968, he made his stage debut in Cavalli's Erismena in Berkeley, CA. The following year, he made his European opera debut singing the title role in Scarlatti's Il Tigrane at Basle. His fluency and command in Baroque operas quickly led to other performances in stage works by Monteverdi, Scarlatti, and Handel. During 1971 alone, he appeared in all three of Monteverdi's best-known operas, essaying Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria in Vienna, Orfeo at the Salzburg Festival, and L'incoronazione di Poppea in Amsterdam. During the 1976-1977 season at Zurich, Esswood repeated the Monteverdi works in a cycle of productions directed by Jean Ponnelle with Harnoncourt conducting, which was subsequently recorded and filmed for worldwide broadcast. Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki's Paradise Lost featured Esswood in the role of Death at both its 1978 premiere in Chicago and at La Scala the following season. In 1984, Esswood created the title role in Philip Glass' Akhnaten at Stuttgart (another role of his subsequently released on recording) and in 1988, he sang Oberon in Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream in Cologne. At Karlsruhe's 1990 Handel Festival, he performed the title role in Admeto and sang Riccardo Primo during the 1991 English Bach Festival at Covent Garden. A later premiere found Esswood creating the role of Seff in Herbert Willi's Schlafes Bruder in Zürich and repeating the role in a second production at Innsbruck. In addition to opera, Esswood has been active as a recitalist and concert singer. On both the concert stage and at many of the world's leading festivals, he has performed works spanning several centuries, including the period of Romanticism, and works from modern times. In addition to Penderecki's Paradise Lost, Esswood also sang the premiere of his Magnificat. Two premieres of works by Alfred Schnittke featured performances by Esswood: the Faust Cantata and the Symphony No. 2, "St. Florian," the latter yet another example of his work now available on disc. During a long career, Esswood has participated in more than 150 recordings, including no fewer than four of Handel's Messiah. His Bach series for Teldec includes the complete cantatas, while his solo recordings engage the music of Purcell, Schumann, and Britten with many others in between. Since 1985, Esswood has been a professor of Baroque vocal studies at the Royal Academy of Music. In 1967, he co-founded the Pro Cantione Antiqua.