Soprano Suzie LeBlanc has been among the younger faces that have stimulated the vibrant early music scene in Montreal and in Canada in general. She has a light voice, refreshingly attuned to the natural strain in music of the eighteenth century rather than to its athletic feats. Accounts of LeBlanc's early life specify her point of origin as Acadia, perhaps suggesting a rejection of the Anglo geographical entity of New Brunswick in which most of Canada's Atlantic Francophone community lives. She had both vocal talent and drive but was never particularly nurtured in terms of training even though her mother was a voice teacher. When she was young, she told La Scena Musicale, "I found it easier to sing before a public than to practice. My voice came out more easily, was more relaxed. That's rare, don't you think?" LeBlanc's introduction to early music came during her youth, and that of the historical-performance movement as a whole, soon after her family moved to Montreal in 1976. She attended a concert at the Studio de Musique Ancienne de Montréal (SMAM) and was instantly hooked. She took up the harpsichord, attending a vocational college in Montreal and minoring in music. It was SMAM director Réjean Poirier who noted her vocal skill and encouraged her first by asking her to sing at his wedding. LeBlanc's transition to singing was slow; she sang in a trio called Musica Secreta and received a baptism by fire after going to England to study early music and being invited to fill in for Emma Kirkby in Anthony Rooley's the Consort of Musicke for an eight-month stint. Since the late '80s she has recorded for ATMA and other labels, specializing in music from the decades after 1700 but also venturing forward to Mozart, for whose songs she has especially good instincts. LeBlanc has appeared in a Netherlands Opera production of Monteverdi's Orfeo and has collaborated with Tafelmusik, Fretwork, Les Voix Humaines, and a host of other historical-performance ensembles both in Canada and abroad. A member of the voice faculty at the University of Montreal, she has founded her own Académie Baroque de Montréal and serves as its artistic director. Her extensive discography includes Handel's Acis and Galatea, Sartorio's L'Orfeo, Monteverdi's Vespro della beata Vergine, and Gluck's Orphée et Eurydice. In 2009 she won an Prix Opus Award for her recording of Messiaen's Chant de terre et de ciel.
Charles Daniels is an English solo and ensemble singer specializing in early and contemporary music. He became a chorister in the famous Choir of King's College, Cambridge. Admission to that position for boy singers is by competitive audition and carries with it the benefit of attendance at the college's prep school, thorough musical and vocal training, and the duty of singing daily services during the school term and in the choir's concerts and tours. Veterans of this position are performers with wide knowledge of musical style and good vocal production.
Daniels attended Winchester College and, when he was ready for university, once again turned to King's College, having matured to a tenor voice. After an equally competitive audition he earned the position of choral scholar there. The duties and benefits were much the same; he became a member of the chorus and a student at Cambridge University on a full scholarship. The subjects of his joint degree were natural sciences and music.
After graduation he entered the Royal College of Music in London on a Foundation Scholarship, where he studied with Edward Brooks. He entered two major British voice competitions: the Great Grimsby International Competition for singers and the 1986 GKN English Song Award. He won major awards in both, including the Hubert Parry Prize for his choice of program.
Daniels has sung in many countries of Europe and in Israel, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada as a solo artist. The big works in his repertory are Baroque choral masterpieces such as Bach cantatas, masses, and passions and Handel oratorios. These include Handel's The Triumph of Time and Truth, Judas Maccabaeus, Solomon, and Acis and Galatea, and regular appearances as the Evangelist in Bach's St. Matthew and St. John Passions.
He has sung with modern instrument organizations such as the RTE Symphony Orchestra, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, and the Gulbenkian Choir and Orchestra. He also has worked with period instrument groups including the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestra, the Academy of Ancient Music, the King's Consort, and Les Arts Florissants. With the last-named group he toured in Lully's opera Atys to the Montpelier Festival, Caen, Madrid, the Opéra-Comique in Paris, and New York. He has also appeared in the Halle Handel Festival, the Flanders Festival in Bruges, the Aix-en-Provence Festival, and the Bach Cantata Pilgrimage 2000.
Other Baroque music in his credits includes Monteverdi's Vespers (which he sang with the Nederlandse Bachvereniging in December 2000), Purcell's Dioclesian (at the Barbican Centre in London with Christopher Hogwood and the Academy of Ancient Music), Purcell's The Fairy Queen, Rameau's La guirlande, and Charpentier's Vêpres aux Jésuites. He has recorded the role of Peachum in John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, several Purcell discs for Hyperion records, The Fairy Queen, Bach's Easter Oratorio, and the Charpentier Vespers already mentioned. He has also recorded Haydn's St. Cecilia Mass. Working with the Hilliard Ensemble, he has participated in a recording with them on the ECM label of music of Perotin.
Other non-Baroque music Daniels has performed includes Schubert's Mass in E flat, Mendelssohn's Elijah, and Puccini's Missa di Gloria, as well as a performance before Pope John Paul II of Wojciech Kilar's Missa Pro Pace. He appeared on worldwide television as part of the BBC's Millennium Live 2000 singing in an all-Handel program with James O'Donnell and the Academy of Ancient Music at Westminster Abbey.
John Potter has a prolific discography reflecting his broad interests and talents as a singer, musicologist, ensemble conductor, and more.
Potter's early training was, as many British singers' is, as a choral scholar at one of the country's ancient universities. Later studies, including time with Peter Pears, covered solo vocal repertoire, but he's always been interested in nearly every type of vocal performance, be it jazz, lute songs, or multimedia presentations of new music. Potter was a member of the Hilliard Ensemble from 1984 to 2001, and this, plus his own ensemble Red Byrd (founded in 1989), was the root of his reputation as an expert interpreter of early music. However, he's also been a backup singer for Manfred Mann, Mike Oldfield, the Who, and others. One of the results of this wide-ranging curiosity is the Dowland Project, recordings for ECM in which early music singers and instrumentalists are joined by jazz musicians, giving music of the Renaissance a fresh perspective. Similarly, Potter is involved with the Hyperion label in the Conductus project, programs with accompanying films by Michael Lynch exploring 12th and 13th century music. He's also been part of premieres of many contemporary works by composers like Gavin Bryars, Luciano Berio, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and several young composers from the University of York. Beyond all of this, Potter is a scholar and teacher, editing books about singing, and notably co-authoring A History of Singing, an overview of vocal music from around the world and many eras.
How are ratings calculated?