Matthew Baker

My earliest memory of classical music was my Grandfather’s LP collection of the great classics, including Swan Lake and The Nutcracker which inspired me to dance as a child of 4 years old.

Making music has been a part of my life ever since, whether in piano lessons, or cello playing, or singing. Next to this my other great passion has been the past. I love the study of history as well as the study of images and objects from the past and how these can transport us to another time and place.

My family was a family of the spoken and performed word: a family of ministers of religion, teachers, actors and singers. The word was the bearer of the Good News, but also of storytelling, performance and humour. From early on I have been attracted to how music could enhance the message contained in text, and my career as a singer has been about bringing together my love of music, text and the past. To this day I am most at home as a singer performing Gregorian melodies a capella or declaiming a baroque recitative. Both are art forms in which music is a vehicle for the declaimed text to shine.

In the past twenty years I have been blessed to perform all over Europe and North America in Baroque and Renaissance music with ensembles such as the Bach Society and Huelgas Ensemble, but also in Romantic lieder and great professional choirs such as The Netherlands Chamber Choir. An absolute highlight of my career was singing the role of St Peter in a performance of Schmelzer’s Le Memorie Dolorose in the festival at La Chaise Dieu in France, with French ensemble Akademia.