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Nancy Maureen Herbison Argenta is one of Canada's most famous and important singers. She has won international acclaim, and is considered by many as the leading Handel soprano of her time.

She was born in Nelson, a small city in eastern British Columbia, in the scenic Kootenay Mountain region. The closest large cities are Calgary, Alberta, and Spokane, WA (U.S.).

At the age of 11 she started formal voice lessons with Dr. Amy Ferguson of Nelson, and sang with one of the school choirs at L.V. Rogers High School in Nelson. By that time, she was frequently making the rather long trip to Vancouver, British Columbia, so she could hear musical events and have additional singing lessons. After graduation from high school in 1975, she attended the Vancouver Community College, then completed her degree at the University of Western Ontario in 1980. A grant from the Canada Council enabled her to go to Europe for private lessons in Düsseldorf (with Gérard Souzay) and in London with Vera Rozsa and Sir Peter Pears.

Her soprano voice is light, clear, and flexible, with a sound that is ideal for classical-era and earlier music. Her professional operatic debut was in two roles in Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie at the 1983 Aix-en-Provence Festival. In 1990 she received the Virginia P. Moore Prize, an annual award from the Canada Council for development of the career of a young Canadian classical musician.

Even before then, she was in demand to perform with period instrument organizations. These have included the Academy of Ancient Music and The English Concert, and such prominent conductors in the movement as Trevor Pinnock, Christopher Hogwood, John Eliot Gardiner, and Roger Norrington. She is particularly noted for her performances of the vocal music of the two leading figures in English music during the Baroque era: George Frideric Handel and Henry Purcell. When she returned to the Aix-en-Provence Festival in 1990, it was to sing in the latter's The Fairy Queen. She has performed most of the major Handel operas and oratorios. She also sings all the large-scale Bach choral/vocal works (B Minor Mass, the Passions, the Christmas Oratorio, and several of the cantatas).

In the classical era she is noted for performances of Haydn masses (some of which she has recorded with Pinnock and Richard Hickox), Haydn's Creation, the role of Zerlina in Don Giovanni and Despina in Così fan tutte. However, she sings music of all eras. She has recorded Schubert for the Virgin Classics label, and has sung in performances of music by Mahler and Schoenberg.

She performs at the world's major music festivals (Mostly Mozart, Schleswig-Holstein, and the BBC Promenade Concerts, for instance), and has sung with leading orchestras of England, the U.S., Canada, and Australia. She is a leading recitalist, and gives chamber performances as well as appearing in full-scale symphony concerts.

She makes her home and bases her career in England.

Daniel Taylor is often described as Canada's leading countertenor. And with scores of rave reviews from concerts across the globe and more than 60 recordings to his credit, it would be hard to challenge the claim. His many supporters, not to mention a host of notable critics, have lavished high praise on Taylor for the beauty of his unique, female-timbred voice. His repertory has tended to favor Renaissance-era and Baroque music, with the cantatas of J.S. Bach heavily figuring in his discography. He also regularly appears on the world's most prestigious operatic stages, again favoring early music repertory in his choice of roles, with the works of Handel taking precedence. Despite his preference for early music, Taylor has sung a fair amount of modern works by a range of diverse composers: Bernstein, Sakamoto, Christos Hatzis, and Arvo Pärt. Taylor is the founder of the Theatre of Early Music, a Montreal-based period-instrument ensemble, for which he also serves as artistic director. In concert Taylor often performs with renowned Canadian soprano Suzie LeBlanc. He has recorded for a spate of major labels, including BIS, Dorian, Atma Classique, Harmonia Mundi, EMI, and Virgin Classics.

Daniel Taylor was born in Canada in 1969. At six he began singing in the (Anglican) St. Matthew's Church choir, and four years later became a treble for the National Arts Centre Opera. At 16 he began vocal lessons with renowned countertenor Allan Fast. Taylor studied music first at McGill University, then, for his master's, at the University of Montreal. He had later studies in Europe in Baroque interpretation and still takes vocal lessons from British countertenor Michael Chance.

Taylor quickly established his reputation in Canada, both in opera and the concert hall. He debuted in 1997 at Glyndebourne to rave reviews in Handel's Theodora. His April 1999 Met debut as Nireno in Handel's Giulio Cesare was equally impressive.

By then he had several major recordings to his credit, including three Orfeo discs of works by Niccolò Jommelli, with the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra under Frieder Bernius.

In the new century Taylor founded the Theatre of Early Music ensemble. The group has attracted such artists as Emma Kirkby, Suzie Leblanc, and Stephen Varcoe and has made a dozen or so recordings. In 2004 Taylor was named the Opus Prizes Artist of the year. Among Taylor's recordings is the 2007 Virgin Classics DVD Bach in Notre Dame.

Recorder virtuoso, conductor, composer, and flutist Matthias Maute is a prominent figure in Montreal's early music scene and is well known in the U.S. and Europe, as well. He is also an important educator.

Maute was born in Ebingen, Germany, in 1963. He studied the recorder in Freiburg, Germany, and Utrecht, Netherlands, with Baldrick Deerenberg and Marion Verbruggen, respectively. Maute began to come to international prominence with a first prize in the soloist category at the Musica Antiqua Bruges Competition in Belgium in 1990. Four years later, he won the Dutch Impressariat Chamber Music Competition as part of the Trio Passio. Soon after that, Maute made his recording debut, playing one of his own compositions on the album Von Paris nach Wien by the Duo Caprice Stuttgart. Maute has written more than 30 compositions for the recorder and has recorded many of them. He has played with various orchestras and chamber groups, including the REBEL Baroque Orchestra in New York, of which he is principal flutist.

Maute has become steadily better known in the 21st century. He was the featured recorder soloist at the Boston Early Music Festival in 2003 and 2005, and he made his debut at New York's Lincoln Center in 2008. Maute settled in Montreal and has performed at Canadian festivals, including the Ottawa Chamber Music Festival, Festival international du Domaine Forget, and Elora Festival. He has appeared on more than 30 recordings and has released solo albums on the Analekta, ATMA Classique, Bridge, and Leaf Music labels. The latter label was home to his 2021 recording -- as conductor -- of Handel's Messiah, HWV 56, featuring Ensemble Caprice. Maute serves as the artistic director of that ensemble, which also includes his wife and frequent duet partner, flutist Sophie Larivière. He teaches recorder, chamber music, and improvisation at Montreal's McGill University and the Université de Montreal. ~ James Manheim

English lutenist Nigel North picked up the lute in the late 1960s while studying guitar at the Guildhall School of Music. At the time, this was viewed as "slacking" to some extent, as the lute was then largely regarded as a historical curiosity rather than a pursuit that was liable to earn one a teaching position. But North found his voice in the lute and stuck with it, and managed to land a position as lute player within the Early Music Consort of London during the last part of its existence under David Munrow. North also backed up legendary countertenor Alfred Deller in some of his final recordings. As the period performance movement began to take off in the wake of Munrow's death, North was able to find work playing continuo parts in ensembles such as Academy of Ancient Music, English Concert, and le Grande Ecurie. In 1975 the Guildhall School of Music appointed North to the position of lute instructor, even though he was still a student at the time. He held this position for 21 years.

North's career as a solo artist on recordings began in 1978 with a L'Oiseau Lyre disc of music by Robert de Visée. Since then he has recorded most frequently (and arguably, best) with Linn Records in the U.K., but North has also appeared as a soloist on discs released by the Saydisc and Arcana labels. In 1988 North co-founded the ensemble Romanesca with violinist Andrew Manze and continuo keyboardist Toll. Together they recorded some of the finest discs of violin-led Baroque chamber music ever for Harmonia Mundi, including multi-award winning sets of works by Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber, Antonio Vivaldi, and Johann Rosenmüller. Unfortunately, when Manze accepted directorship of the Academy of Ancient Music in 1998, Romanesca's activity came to a close, and with the death of John Toll in 2001, their recorded output appears finite. North left the Guildhall School in 1996 and spent three years teaching at the Hochschule der Künst in Berlin. In 1999, North joined the faculty of Indiana University in Bloomington as a professor in the Early Music Institute there.