Music Department Staff at the University of York
John Potter
[ photo: Thomas Schreiber]
last updated 11.6.04
see links below
Biography:
(for concert programme biography click here)
John Potter joined the Music Department in 1998, and continues to combine his career as a singer with his teaching and research work. Although educated in the English choral tradition (chorister at King's College Cambridge, Music Scholar at King's School Canterbury and Choral Exhibitioner at Gonville & Caius Cambridge) he has always been fascinated by vocal activity of all sorts. His teachers included Lieder singer Walter Gruner, the accompanist Paul Hamburger, and the tenor Peter Pears. His early career included spells with the BBC Singers and Swingle II, and he was a founder member of the avant-garde ensemble Electric Phoenix. He was a member of the Hilliard Ensemble from 1984 to 2001 and has enjoyed a long association with ECM Records' Manfred Eicher. John also coaches ensembles on the European mainland, and chairs the jury for the contest for ensembles at the Tampere International Choir Festival (Finland).
In 1989 he founded Red Byrd, together with his bass colleague Richard Wistreich. Their Hyperion CD of music by Leonin won a Diapason d’Or d’Année in 1998 and a second CD of music by Leonin (also featuring the York student ensemble Yorvox) released in November 2001 has also won a Diapason d'Or and had excellent reviews (see the Yorvox link below). Red Byrd's recordings also include Monteverdi's Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda and the cult classic Songs of Love & Death featuring Monteverdi performed on electric instruments and specially-commissioned pieces by the former Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones. Current commissions include works from Nigel Osborne, Ivan Moody and John Surman, and works by post-graduate student composers at York. Red Byrd gave the first performances of Gavin Bryars' 3rd Book of Madrigals at the Huddersfield contemporary music Festival in 2003; John Potter has also worked closely with Gavin Bryars on projects with the Hilliard Ensemble more recently with trio Mediaeval and the Gavin Bryars Ensemble.
John is involved with two vocal ensembles in the Music Department: YORVOX, a small vocal chamber group and YORK VOCAL INDEX, a larger, 16 voice 'soloists choir' which which he co-directs with Bill Brooks. He also coaches an MA vocal ensemble and vocal groups on the Ensemble Performance Project.
John Potter's complete discography runs to some
140 titles. His recent releases have included a re-interpretation of songs
by John Dowland with jazz musicians John Surman and Barry Guy on ECM. This was a Sunday Times record
of the year and was No 5 in the New York Times list of the best records
of 2000. It was also one of the 5 ECM CDs cited in Manfred Eicher's 2001
Grammy nomination. He made further recordings with the same band
in the summer of 2001 and the first of two two new albums with this ensemble
(now known as The Dowland Project) was released in October 2003.
The CD, entitled 'Care-charming sleep', includes Monteverdi's 'Lamento
della ninfa' and other English and Italian 17th century works.
Also released in 2001 was the first album produced by John, the trio mediaeval's recording of the 14th century 'Messe de Tournai' and Ivan Moody's 'Words of the Angel', which is also the title of the CD (ECM New Series 1753 461882-2). This has been a spectacular success worldwide, reaching No 1 in the Amazon chart. John also produced the second album by the Trio, which appeared in January 2004, also to great critical acclaim. In December he will co-produce a recording by the Latvian Radio Choir of music by Gavin Bryars.
In addition to recording John has a very active career as a performer,
especially of contemporary music. Recent engagements have included
a residency with Red Byrd at Pomona College in California, premieres of new
works by Gavin Bryars in the Valencia Biennale, and premieres by Bill Brooks,
Neil Sorrell and Roger Marsh in Chicago and Urbana , as well as live and
broadcast events closer to home in the UK with The Dowland Project. He aslo
gave the US premiere of Joanne Metcalf's Doom Begotten Music with
orchestra earlier this year, and presented a further volume
of the York Songbook with Nicky Losseff (prepared piano) in the Spring Festival.
Research:
His interest in research began while he was on the road with Swingle II (as the Swingle Singers were then known). He completed a BA with the Open University and went on to do a PhD, the research for which was very much related to his performing experience. His thesis formed the basis for Vocal Authority, published in 1998 by Cambridge University Press, and he subsequently went on to edit the Cambridge Companion to Singing (Cambridge, 2000), one of CUP's best selling music books. At the moment he is working on The Cambridge History of Singing, and a Handbook on a cappella ensemble singing (jointly with Swedish jazz singer Anders Jalkéus). His research interests extend to any aspect of singing including popular music (of which he has had considerable experience, having performed or recorded with many bands including the Who, Mike Oldfield, Emerson Lake & Palmer, Manfred Mann's Earthband, and more recently the jazz musicians Jan Garbarek, Peter Erskine, Barry Guy and John Surman). More recently he has turned his attention to late 19th/early 20th century singing style, and has given a Patrick Saul Seminar at the British Library on the oldest surviving recordings of singers. He has just been awarded an Edison Fellowship to enable him to continue his work on portamento at the National Sound Archive during 2003 and will take part in another Saul Seminar on December 2nd as Respondent to the tenor Nigel Rogers. Future writing projects include The Tenor: History of a voice for Yale University Press.
John Potter is a member of the advisory panel for the VOXed research project
on the application of technology in the singing studio, and is an advisor
to the RCM's Learning How to Perform project. He was a specialist
performance advisor for the last RAE round.
Administration:
John Potter is responsible for the Department's SOCRATES programme, which enables students to spend a term studying abroad. He is also responsible for overseas Visiting Students. He chairs the Performance Supervisors Committee and co-ordinates the activities of the Musicians in Residence. He runs the MA in Vocal Studies and is responsible for the Department's research seminars.
Selected Publications:
Books & articles:
'Baroque Singing', in Burton, A (ed) Baroque Music: ABRSM Handbook
London, ABRSM (2002)
(ed) The Cambridge Companion to Singing
Cambridge University Press (2000)
(includes an Introduction and chapters on Ensemble Singing and
Jazz Singing)
Vocal Authority: Singing Style and Ideology
Cambridge University Press (1998)
'Reconstructing Lost Voices' in Knighton & Fallows
Companion to Medieval & Renaissance Music (Dent
1992, rpr OUP 1998)
'The Singer, not the Song: Women Singers as Composer-poets'
Popular Music 12/2, Cambridge1994
‘Louis Armstrong: Swing and Subtext’ AOUG Journal 1995/6
‘Speaking in Tongues’ Dance Theatre Journal 13/1 1996
Review of Emmons & Thomas' Power Performance for Singers
in Music & Letters 81/2 May 2000
Review of James Stark's Bel Canto: a history of vocal pedagogy
in Music & Letters 82/3 August 2001
‘Qawwali singing’ in Songlines (Gramophone Publications) summer 1999
forthcoming:
'Creative responsibility: forging new relationships between conductors and their singers'CD booklet notes:
Walter Frye (ECM, 1993)
Giovanni-Felici Sances (ASV 1997)
Lassus (ECM 1998)
Tournai Mass (ECM, 2001)
Care-charming Sleep (ECM, 2003)
Soir, dit-elle (ECM 2004)
contributions to revised New Grove Dictionary of Music:
‘Singing’ 7
‘Singer-songwriters’
contributions to Encyclopaedia of Popular Music of
the World
(Vol 2, 2003, Cassell):
Vocal Groups; Crooner; Declamation; Falsetto; Humming; Vibrato
articles about John Potter can be found in
Gramophone Early Music summer 1999
Brief thoughts on jazz singing on BBC Music Magazine (July
2001)
'Without Constraints' Choir & Organ Jan/Feb 2002
There is a substantial amount of recent info including pictures and a discography at iclassics and http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Bio/Potter-John.htm
Project Teaching
For John Potter's teaching projects click here.
External Examining etc
John Potter has been exernal examiner for the City University (Performance
MA) and Trinity College, London (MMus) and is currently external examiner
for the MA in Choral Education at the University of Surry (Roehampton).
LINKS: