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

Zoë Cartlidge was introduced to the baroque oboe whilst studying modern oboe at the Guildhall School in London, and quickly fell in love with the beautiful sound and feel of the instrument. She had many performance opportunities at the Guildhall on both instruments, from solo and concertante parts with the Guildhall Baroque Orchestra under Pavlo Beznosiuk, to orchestral roles with the London Symphony Orchestra under Simon Rattle.  Zoë is passionate about teaching, running a private practice from home in Surrey, and freelances around the UK and other European countries, playing regularly with groups such as Canzona, the Istante Collective, the Hanse Band and the Opéra de Baugé Festival Orchestra. She first attended Baroque Week as a Bursary Student in 2015 and has gladly returned each year since as an Assistant Tutor.  When she is not playing music, Zoë likes to go walking, taking part in actions protesting social and climate issues, and - her most recent hobby - beekeeping.

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.

David Miller is a long-established soloist and continuo player on lute, chitarrone and early guitars. He performs and records with all the finest English period orchestras and ensembles as well as a number of top opera companies. Amongst David's numerous recordings are the award-wining solo disc with Elin Manahan Thomas Ravish'd with Sacred Extasises; his solo album The Famous Weiss, and Biber's Rosary Sonatas with Rachel Podger, which won the Gramophone Baroque Instrumental Award in 2016. David has performed and taught at Dartington International Summer School since the mid-1990s, and is Professor of Lute at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

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

Jacob Garside (Assistant Tutor) is a freelance cellist and viola da gamba player based in London.  He has played for St James Baroque, City Bach Collective, Canzona, La Nuova Musica, Oxford Baroque Soloists, Royal Northern Sinfonia, the viol consort Newe Vialles, The 18th Century Sinfonia and Newcastle Baroque, and is a founding member of FIGO. He studied with Jonathan Manson at the Royal Academy of Music and is currently studying the viol with Reiko Ichise and Richard Boothby at the RCM (Postgraduate Artists Diploma) where he is supported by the Linda Hill Scholarship.

Alice Poppleton (Assistant Tutor) is a freelance violinist and viola player.  She plays with many leading period ensembles including Instruments of Time and Truth, La Nuova Musica, Canzona and Music For Awhile, and is a founding member of FIGO. Alice also enjoys facilitating community music making.  Her tutors at Bristol University, the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama included Rachel Podger, Nicolette Moonan and Jane Rogers. 

Tom Hammond-Davies (Visiting Tutor) is an award-winning choral conductor who lives and works in Oxford.  He was an Organ Scholar at Hertford College, Oxford and then studied choral conducting at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire with Paul Spicer.  Tom founded the Oxford Bach Soloists in 2017.  This pioneering project has set out to perform the complete vocal works of J S Bach in chronological sequence, in monthly concerts.  He is also director of the Blenheim Singers and the Wooburn Singers and has guest-conducted the New Mozart Orchestra, International Baroque Players, and Oxford Bach Choir.

Oliver Webber (Visiting Tutor) is an internationally acclaimed baroque violinist.  He is the artistic director of the Monteverdi String Band and has directed programmes ranging from 17th century chamber music to Hasse operas with ensembles throughout Europe.  He is the leader of Ludus Baroque (Edinburgh) and principal and guest leader with the Gabrieli Players, the Early Opera Company, and the London Handel Orchestra.  Oliver makes his own gut strings, and bringing the fruits of scholarly research to life on the concert platform is a driving force behind his work.

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.