Baroque Week has an unusually high tutor—student ratio amongst early music summer courses. We could have as many as eighteen chamber music groups in each session, and each group can still receive tuition for at least half the session.

Theresa Caudle is well known in the early music world as a baroque violinist and cornettist. She was a principal member of The Parley of Instruments for 25 years. She now regularly leads The Hanover Band and also plays with many leading period instrument ensembles including The London Handel Orchestra and The Monteverdi String Band. Theresa has her own ensemble, Canzona, but also directs other ensembles here and abroad, both professional and amateur, such as The Croatian Baroque Ensemble and Salisbury Baroque. Theresa also organises several other very successful baroque courses at Benslow and Jackdaws. www.canzona.co.uk/theresa.html

Ann Allen plays baroque oboe, shawms and recorder with leading ensembles and orchestras throughout Europe including Academy for Ancient Music, Ad Fontes and L’Arpa Festante. She has appeared at the Coliseum in a rock opera by Damon Albarn and at the Globe Theatre in the award winning production of Richard III. She formed the medieval group Mediva while at the RAM which has reached the finals of prestigious competitions as well as recording several CDs. She also directs the baroque ensemble Il Bacio and jointly runs the double reed ensemble Syrinx. She set up her own festival in Basel, Switzerland mixing early music with modern music and presenting it in new and unusual ways.

Amanda Babington, violin, recorder and musette, plays with many of the leading period-instrument ensembles including Les Talens Lyrique, Dunedin Consort, Ex Cathedra, and the Gabrieli Consort and Players. Her chamber music ensembles, including Four’s Company, Northern Baroque and Aberdeen Early Music Collective, have busy schedules of concerts and workshops and she directs the University of Manchester Baroque Orchestra. She is a Visiting Performance Fellow at Aberdeen University and a lecturer in Academic Studies at the Royal Northern College of Music. An expert on Handel, her edition of his Dettingen Te Deum and Dettingen Anthem is published by Bärenreiter.

Clare Beesley specializes in historical flutes from Renaissance to Romantic periods and performs in solo recitals, ensemble and orchestral settings Europe-wide. Frequently performing with Concerto Amsterdam, Accademia Amsterdam and Collegium Musicum Den Haag, recent engagements include concerts with Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and il pomo d’oro. She directs the flute consort Catch As Catch Can, and will lead the Accord Renaissance Flute Course in France in May 2018. Awarded a Masters degree with distinction by the Royal Conservatory of the Hague, her current research concerns interrelationships between late 18th century notions of gender, aesthetics and flute tone. www.clarebeesley.info

Steven Devine enjoys a busy career as a music director and keyboard player. Since 2007 he has been the harpsichordist with London Baroque in addition to his position as Co-Principal keyboard player with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. He is also the principal keyboard player for The Gonzaga Band, Apollo and Pan, The Classical Opera Company and performs regularly with many other groups around Europe. He has recorded over thirty discs with other artists and ensembles and made seven solo recordings. He made his London conducting debut in 2002 at the Royal Albert Hall and is now a regular performer there — including making his Proms directing debut in August 2007 with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. He has conducted the Mozart Festival Orchestra in every major concert hall in the UK and also across Switzerland. Steven is Music Director for New Chamber Opera in Oxford and with them has performed repertoire from Cavalli to Rossini. For the Dartington Festival Opera he has conducted Handel’s Orlando and Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. stevendevine.com

Satoko Doi-Luck regularly gives solo harpsichord recitals; recent venues include Handel House and The Plumley Collection. As a continuo player she has performed with Birmingham Opera Company, La Serenissima and Shakespeare’s Globe. Satoko is a founder member of Ceruleo and runs Ensemble Molière which focuses on French baroque repertoire and has performed in festivals in Graz, Bruges, and Utrecht. Satoko was a Junior Fellow in Harpsichord/Continuo at the Royal College of Music, and was also a participant in the Handel House Talent Scheme 2015–2016. www.satokodoi-luck.com

Jane Francis is a cellist and viola da gambist with many years of playing, tutoring, and teaching experience. She has played with many leading ensembles and artists and given solo recitals on the viola da gamba partnered by Colin Booth, John Wellingham, Helena Brown, and Peter Lea Cox. She was a co-director of the South West based ensemble Continuo that specialised in “one to a part” performances of Bach Cantatas. She is a regular player with Marches Baroque and plays in a Renaissance viol consort along with David Hatcher, with whom she runs a Viol Consort course at Hawkwood College, where for many years she ran annual baroque chamber music courses. She is the longest serving tutor on Baroque Week, and tutored for a great many years on the Easter Early Music Week. With performing and teaching being inextricably linked for her, she has worked abroad in Finland, Hungary, and the Ukraine, to pursue the very best concepts that develop the art of teaching and musicianship.

Kate Semmens is a soloist with many leading groups and opera companies, and has sung with some of the UK’s finest choirs with conductors including Sir John Elliot Gardiner, Paul McCreesh, John Butt and Eric Whitacre. Kate has been particularly involved in historic performances, including singing the title role in the first modern performance of John Stanley’s Teraminta for Opera Restor’d and performances of Cavalli’s Erismena, from the original English edition bought by the Bodleian Library in 2009. Kate is developing a reputation as a teacher, including at Dartington, and teaching and giving masterclasses alongside Nancy Argenta and Ingrid Antrott on a summer school for Oratorio. Together with Steven Devine, Kate has also been giving day workshops for Early Music Fora across the country. www.katesemmens.com

Zoë Cartlidge (Assistant Tutor) is a young player and teacher of modern and baroque oboes who attended Baroque Week as a bursary student four years ago and has returned each year since as an Assistant Tutor.  She has played with a wide variety of groups including the London Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra of the Swan and the Opéra de Baugé festival orchestra.

Jacob Garside (Assistant Tutor) is a young cellist and viola da gamba player specialising in music of the 16th to 18th centuries.  He studied with Jonathan Manson at the Royal Academy of Music and now plays with the chamber group Figo and with other groups including the Zeitgeist Chamber Orchestra, Bellot Ensemble, Newcastle Baroque, The 18th Century Sinfonia and The Bishop's Consort.

Alice Poppleton (Assistant Tutor) is a young violinist and viola player.  She studied at the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama with Rachel Podger, Nicolette Moonan and Jane Rogers.  She now plays with many period ensembles including Figo, Instruments of Time and Truth, La Nuova Musica and Music For Awhile.

Peter Collier directs the Manchester-based Telemann Baroque Ensemble and has appeared as harpsichordist with the Halle Orchestra, the Lancashire Chamber Orchestra, Cheshire Sinfonia and Northern Baroque. After many years as Course Director he has retired but continues to attend as a harpsichordist, to manage the music library and to organise chamber groups.

Mary Collins is an Early Dance specialist whose research and teaching approach has inspired musicians to look afresh at the dance music that is at the heart of the baroque repertoire bringing, in turn, a fresh perspective on the great composers of the baroque era. Reviving original choreography and gesture for historical performance, Mary promotes a vibrant, multi-disciplinary approach to music making, valued by artists and audiences alike. A practitioner and researcher, she performs regularly with the London Handel Players and Florilegium, giving master classes, lecture-recitals and workshops to dancers and musicians throughout the world. marycollins.co.uk