Tenor Alessandro Fisher has won some of British music's top career development awards. By the early 2020s, he had already notched a long list of appearances on recordings.
Fisher's mother was an opera singer and voice teacher, and he grew up surrounded by opera; the first album he owned was a recording of Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, K. 620. He was never pushed into a musical career, however. Fisher was a choral scholar (a singer who receives scholarship support in return for performing at university functions such as chapel services) at Clare College, Cambridge University, where he studied Modern and Medieval Languages. He went on for further studies at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. Fisher's first major professional position was as an Associate Artist with the Mozartists, a group dedicated to historically oriented performance of unusual Mozart works. He scored a breakthrough with a first prize at the Kathleen Ferrier Awards in 2016. From 2018 to 2021, Fisher was a member of the BBC New Generation Artist Scheme, which brought performing and recording opportunities. In 2018, Fisher made his recording debut with the Mozartists and the Classical Opera Orchestra on a recording of Mozart's Grabmusik, K. 42, and Bastien und Bastienne, K. 50, on the Signum Classics label. He has made several more recordings with the Mozartists.
Fisher quickly found opportunities with other companies and is equally at home in early music and traditional repertory. He appeared at England's Glyndebourne Festival in multiple roles in Francesco Cavalli's Hipermestra, as Bellecourt in Jacques Offenbach's Vert Vert at the Garsington Opera, and in the title role of Rameau's Dardanus with the English Touring Opera. His career has begun to extend beyond Britain, including an appearance as Lucano and the First Soldier in Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea at the Salzburg Festival. Fisher is in demand as a recitalist and has appeared in the songs by Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha with pianist Stephen Hough at the BBC Proms. In 2022, Fisher received the prestigious Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship. The following year, he made his solo debut on the Albion Classics label with a recording of music by Ralph Vaughan Williams and Ian Venables. ~ James Manheim
Pianist Anna Tilbrook is in international demand as both an accompanist and a chamber music player. She has also been active as a vocal coach and repetiteur.
A native of England's Hertfordshire region, Tilbrook was trained at York University and later, on scholarship, at the Royal Academy of Music, where she won a host of accompaniment prizes and became an Associate in 2009. She made her debut at Wigmore Hall in 1999 and has since joined a variety of singers and top chamber music groups at festivals and major concert hall appearances.
Tilbrook has worked with an impressive range of singers and instrumentalists, most of them British. These have included Lucy Crowe, with whom she made her debut at Carnegie Hall in New York, Mark Padmore, Iestyn Davies, and many others. In television concerts mounted by the Welsh National Opera, she has performed with the likes of Bryn Terfel, José Carreras, and Angela Gheorghiu. Her most lasting collaboration has been with tenor James Gilchrist, with whom she has explored the 20th century English song repertory and with whom she made her recording debut on the 2005 Linn album Oh Fair to See. Their recording of Ralph Vaughan Williams' On Wenlock Edge was a finalist in the 2008 Gramophone Awards, and they have recorded song cycles by Gerald Finzi, Kenneth Leighton, and Benjamin Britten, as well as earning an Editor's Choice nod from Gramophone for recordings of Schubert's song cycles.
As a chamber player, Tilbrook has worked with the Sacconi, Barbirolli, and Elias String Quartets. As a rehearsal pianist and coach, she has worked with top-flight organizations, including the London Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Opera. She has also played Baroque continuo and directed a Buxton Festival performance of Telemann's Pimpinone from the harpsichord. Tilbrook's catalog of recordings is large and was augmented in 2018 by a viola version of Ralph Vaughan Williams' Six Studies in English Folksong, performed with violist Philip Dukes, which appeared on the Chandos label. Tilbrook backed soprano Lucy Crowe, another frequent collaborator, on the 2021 Linn recital Longing. She has recorded mostly for Chandos, Linn, and Orchid Classics, but she moved to Rubicon Classics in 2024, accompanying tenor Alessandro Fisher on the flower-themed album A Gardener's World. ~ James Manheim
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