Ruth Holton
Encyclopedia
Training
Holton won a choral exhibitionExhibition (scholarship)
-United Kingdom and Ireland:At the universities of Dublin, Oxford and Cambridge, and at Westminster School, Eton College and Winchester College, and various other UK educational establishments, an exhibition is a financial award or grant to an individual student, normally on grounds of merit. The...
at Clare College, Cambridge
Clare College, Cambridge
Clare College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England.The college was founded in 1326, making it the second-oldest surviving college of the University after Peterhouse. Clare is famous for its chapel choir and for its gardens on "the Backs"...
and studied music there. Her later musical studies were with Elizabeth Lane, Nancy Long and Julie Kennard.
Career
Like several other former members of the Clare College choir, she joined the Cambridge SingersCambridge Singers
Cambridge Singers is an English mixed voice chamber/choral group formed in 1981 by their director John Rutter with the primary purpose of making recordings under their own label "Collegium"....
, founded by John Rutter
John Rutter
John Milford Rutter CBE is a British composer, conductor, editor, arranger and record producer, mainly of choral music.-Biography:Born in London, Rutter was educated at Highgate School, where a fellow pupil was John Tavener. He read music at Clare College, Cambridge, where he was a member of the...
, a previous director of music at Clare. She has also been recorded as a member of the Tallis Scholars
Tallis Scholars
The Tallis Scholars are a British vocal ensemble normally consisting of two singers per part, with a core group of ten singers.Formed in 1973 by their director Peter Phillips, they specialise in performing a cappella sacred vocal music written during the Renaissance by composers from all over Europe...
.
Holton is a frequent singer of baroque music
Baroque music
Baroque music describes a style of Western Classical music approximately extending from 1600 to 1760. This era follows the Renaissance and was followed in turn by the Classical era...
and has performed or recorded with such early music
Early music
Early music is generally understood as comprising all music from the earliest times up to the Renaissance. However, today this term has come to include "any music for which a historically appropriate style of performance must be reconstructed on the basis of surviving scores, treatises,...
specialists as John Eliot Gardiner
John Eliot Gardiner
Sir John Eliot Gardiner CBE FKC is an English conductor. He founded the Monteverdi Choir , the English Baroque Soloists and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique...
, Ton Koopman
Ton Koopman
Ton Koopman is a conductor, organist and harpsichordist.Koopman had a "classical education" and then studied the organ , harpsichord and musicology in Amsterdam...
and Gustav Leonhardt
Gustav Leonhardt
Gustav Leonhardt is a highly renowned Dutch keyboard player, conductor, musicologist, teacher and editor. Leonhardt has been a leading figure in the movement to perform music on period instruments...
. Several critics have noted the light boyish qualities of her voice. Holton made her recording debut as a soloist in 1986 with Bach's St John Passion and between 2000 and 2001 took part in a project with Pieter Jan Leusink
Pieter Jan Leusink
Pieter Jan Leusink is a Dutch conductor of classical music.He studied organ in Zwolle at the Municipal Conservatory and took conducting lessons from Gottfried van der Horst...
, the Netherlands Bach Collegium and the Holland Boys Choir to record all Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
's sacred cantata
Cantata
A cantata is a vocal composition with an instrumental accompaniment, typically in several movements, often involving a choir....
s as part of Brilliant Classics
Brilliant Classics
Brilliant Classics is a Dutch classical music record label, based in Leeuwarden, formerly part of Foreign Media Music BV, but since March 2011 acquired by Triacta. The company is notable for its ultra-budget market approach turning around decline in classical records sales with "Complete Mozart...
' complete Bach Edition. She participated in the project of Ton Koopman
Ton Koopman
Ton Koopman is a conductor, organist and harpsichordist.Koopman had a "classical education" and then studied the organ , harpsichord and musicology in Amsterdam...
and the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir
Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir
The Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir is a Dutch early-music group based in Amsterdam.The Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir was created in two stages by the conductor, organist and harpsichordist Ton Koopman. He founded the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra in 1979 and the Amsterdam Baroque Choir in...
to record Bach's complete vocal works. She has also worked with the choir of St. Thomas Church, Leipzig, where Bach was cantor
Cantor (church)
A cantor is the chief singer employed in a church with responsibilities for the ecclesiastical choir; also called the precentor....
, and took part in their televised performance of the Mass in B minor marking the 250th anniversary of the composer's death, as well as in an earlier broadcast of the St John Passion.
Other baroque composers she has recorded include Carissimi, Purcell
Purcell
Henry Purcell was an English composer.Purcell may also refer to:*Purcell, Indiana, an unincorporated community in Johnson Township, Knox County, Indiana*Purcell, Missouri, a city in Jasper County, Missouri, United States...
and Handel
HANDEL
HANDEL was the code-name for the UK's National Attack Warning System in the Cold War. It consisted of a small console consisting of two microphones, lights and gauges. The reason behind this was to provide a back-up if anything failed....
. Among her work on later music are recordings of Mozart, Haydn and Schütz
Heinrich Schütz
Heinrich Schütz was a German composer and organist, generally regarded as the most important German composer before Johann Sebastian Bach and often considered to be one of the most important composers of the 17th century along with Claudio Monteverdi...
, a live performance of Dvořák
Antonín Dvorák
Antonín Leopold Dvořák was a Czech composer of late Romantic music, who employed the idioms of the folk music of Moravia and his native Bohemia. Dvořák’s own style is sometimes called "romantic-classicist synthesis". His works include symphonic, choral and chamber music, concerti, operas and many...
's Stabat Mater, and performances and recordings of contemporary composers including John Adams, Steve Reich
Steve Reich
Stephen Michael "Steve" Reich is an American composer who together with La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass is a pioneering composer of minimal music...
and new works by David Briggs, Howard Thomas, Matthew King
Matthew King (composer)
Matthew King is a British composer and pianist. His works include opera, piano and chamber music, choral and orchestral pieces.-Career:...
, Brian Inglis and Guy Woolfenden
Guy Woolfenden
Guy Anthony Woolfenden OBE is an English composer and conductor.-Biography:Woolfenden was born in Ipswich and educated at Westminster Abbey Choir School, London, and Whitgift School, Croydon. He studied music at Christ's College in Cambridge and went on to study at the Guildhall School of Music...
. She has also given Lied
Lied
is a German word literally meaning "song", usually used to describe romantic songs setting German poems of reasonably high literary aspirations, especially during the nineteenth century, beginning with Carl Loewe, Heinrich Marschner, and Franz Schubert and culminating with Hugo Wolf...
er recitals, some of which have been broadcast by BBC Radio 3
BBC Radio 3
BBC Radio 3 is a national radio station operated by the BBC within the United Kingdom. Its output centres on classical music and opera, but jazz, world music, drama, culture and the arts also feature. The station is the world’s most significant commissioner of new music, and its New Generation...
or Westdeutscher Rundfunk
Westdeutscher Rundfunk
Westdeutscher Rundfunk is a German public-broadcasting institution based in the Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia with its main office in Cologne. WDR is a constituent member of the consortium of German public-broadcasting institutions, ARD...
.
Holton has appeared at events such as the Aldeburgh Festival
Aldeburgh Festival
The Aldeburgh Festival is an English arts festival devoted mainly to classical music. It takes place each June in the Aldeburgh area of Suffolk, centred on the main concert hall at Snape Maltings...
and the Three Choirs Festival
Three Choirs Festival
The Three Choirs Festival is a music festival held each August alternately at the cathedrals of the Three Counties and originally featuring their three choirs, which remain central to the week-long programme...
. In addition to performing, she has coached singers internationally, as well as having been head of vocal studies at St. Joseph's College, London
St. Joseph's College, London
St Joseph's College is a Secondary School for Boys in Upper Norwood in the London Borough of Croydon. It is a Mathematics and Computing Specialist School and a Cisco Academy. It is a voluntary aided Roman Catholic comprehensive school for students aged 11 to 18 years...
.