Nancy Long
Nancy Long's full and varied solo career has taken the mezzo-soprano to the major concert platforms and festivals in Europe and America. She began her career in the 1970s singing with groups such as the New York Pro Musica, the New York Ensemble for Early Music, Musica Reservata (London), and the Huelgas Ensemble (Belgium). She has sung as a soloist with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the London Sinfonietta (Simon Rattle conducting), and the Bournemouth Sinfonietta. She sang the Sorceress in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, with Dame Janet Baker as Dido, with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, directed by Phillip Ledger. She has also performed with the Raglan Baroque Players, and the Ensemble Modern, Frankfurt (Paul Daniel conducting). Nancy made the first recording of a work by Alejandro Viñao with three other soloists from Singcircle. It was performed in Norway, Finland, Poland, Sweden, and in a Promenade Concert in London. This group also made a recording of Stockhausen’s Stimmung.
Besides being a founding member of Singcircle, Miss Long sang and recorded with the select six soloists of the London Sinfonietta Voices for many years, performing and recording many world premieres, including composers such as Berio and Birtwistle. In 1984 she gave a well received recital ‘debut’ at the Wigmore Hall, London. Nancy has performed in the Three Choirs Festival, and the festivals of Cheltenham, Bath, Windsor and Edinburgh. She has also recorded with the New York Pro Musica, and the Huelgas Ensemble. Her concerts with the group Tragicomedia included the Innsbruck Festival and performances of operas by Monteverdi and Francesca Caccini in Bremen, with Nigel Rogers and Harry van der Kamp. In spring 1994 they gave a concert in Geneva for a concert of Italian monody and English song of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. This CD was the first recording made by the then new ensemble in 1988. Nancy’s teaching career began as a graduate Fellow at the University of Maryland and continued at the American University in Washington, D.C., before she settled in London. There she built up a considerable private teaching practice while also giving singing lessons at the London Early Music Centre between 1978 and 1982. In 1983 she began eleven years of teaching at the Centre de Musique Ancienne and the Conservatoire Populaire in Geneva, Switzerland, moving there with her family in 1987. Since her return to Britain in 1994, she has spent several years teaching choral scholars at Trinity College, Cambridge University. There have been master classes, lectures, and workshops in the U.S.A. Along with Stephen Stubbs and Emma Kirkby, Nancy was invited to perform and give masterclasses by the Hilliard Ensemble at their festival in Sussex, England. She has also given classes at the Flanders Festival (Belgium), the Utrecht Early Music Festival (Holland), the Erice Festival (Sicily), and in Switzerland.
