National Early Music Association office-holders

Christopher Hogwood has been one of the leading lights of the early music movement since the 1970s.

Link to Christopher Hogwood's web site.....

Clifford Bartlett's first experience of early music was attending a mammoth Albert-Hall Messiah in 1948. Since then, he has gone on to edit the work for Oxford University Press. His enthusiasm for early music was at first primarily as a listener, then in 1969 he learnt how to play continuo with a crash course of ten different live concerts in a month, thanks to meeting Peter Holman at a viol class. Through the 1970s he worked at the BBC Music Library, where he gave a considerable amount of assistance to the burgeoning early-music scene. From 1984 he has been an editor and publisher under the name King's Music, providing a service to early musicians around the world. He began reviewing books and editions of early music each month from issue 2 of Early Music News in 1977, expanding into Early Music Review in 1994. He was involved with the Early Music Centre during the 1980s and has been chairman of the Eastern Early Music Forum for about 20 years. Clifford’s vast knowledge of music publishing is invaluable to Nema and he is on the Editorial Board of Early Music Performer. Clifford Bartlett became Chairman of Nema in November 2003. His role will be to take the chair at Council meetings, lead the policies of the Association, and represent Nema in the national and international early music community.

John Briggs is a freelance polymath. He is essentially an amateur, with pretensions to musicology. His house is filling up with string instruments which he can't quite play. He sees his role on the NEMA Council as representing the informed listener and consumer of Early Music, rather than the active practitioner. After some months acting in the role he was elected Deputy Chairman of Nema in November 2003.

Jane Beeson was for thirteen years part of the editorial team of Early Music, the quarterly magazine published by Oxford University Press, and she is now the publication’s Advertising Manager. She is a very keen performer of early music as a singer and viol player, has been a member of several of London’s chamber and church choirs, and on moving to rural Lincolnshire became the Administrator of the 2003 Lincoln Early Music Festival. As Secretary of NEMA she coordinates the Council and arranges meetings, and also takes responsibility for the content of Nema’s website, in consultation with the Council and the Webmaster.

Mark Windisch stumbled in to recorders by accident when a friend lent him a bass and a tutor in 1958. After attending evening classes in consort playing under John Beckett's tutelage he felt that he had learnt a little. In 1980 after attending a recorder course which had an "early music" section he saw some weird and wonderful windcaps and was hooked. Then followed 15 years with Bernard Thomas in The Southwark Waits at Morley College, graduating to sordunes and curtals. Following an appeal from NEMA, Mark took on the Treasurer's role and before long added the position of Administrator to his burgeoning portfolio of voluntary activities. As Treasurer of NEMA he deals with the Association’s finances.

John Bence, after 31 years teaching in Secondary Schools and making and selling early musical instruments in his spare time, is now working as a free-lance teacher of harpsichord, organ and recorder. For 25 years he has led the semi-professional early music group "The Longslade Consort", and he is Festival Director of the Leicester Early music Festival. John Bence has been Director of Music at St. Mary de Castro Church, Leicester for the past 45 years. He has a passion for food and "John's Page" on the Leicester Early Music Festival web site has a monthly recipe, usually of his own devising. He has written for The Times Educational Supplement, British Journal of Music Education and the Musical Opinion.
He is Hon. Administrator of NEMA and a member of NEMA Council.

Keith Bennett is the editor of the Early Music Yearbook.

Richard Bethell started the recorder after hearing Carl Dolmetsch’s rhythmic, stylish and in tune recording of Handel’s A minor recorder sonata. Robert Salkeld at Morley College knocked off Richard’s rough edges. He earned a meagre living from music for 2 years in the early 70s. He recalls playing in an Ars Nova series at Fenton House, and serving up his own home brew afterwards. (Just try to get away with that now “licensing reform” has been enacted!) He did recording sessions with Paul Lewis and others, played crumhorn for Musica Reservata with David Fallows and Bernard Thomas, cornett with Christopher Monk and contrabass shawm at outdoor gigs. Now retired, he hacks away (sedately) at Domenico Scarlatti’s wonderful treasure trove on his Malcolm Rose harpsichord and has dusted off his great bass shawm for occasional Waits events. He is helping to plan NEMA’s Conference Singing 1500-1900: style, technique, knowledge, assumption, experiment. This is scheduled for July 2009, in cooperation with the Music Department, University of York, and the York Early Music Festival.

Jeremy Burbidge, after lecturing in higher education, took early retirement to run a small publishing firm with Ruth, my wife, specialising in beekeeping and music. As well as acting as publisher to NEMA we publish The Recorder Magazine, Harpsichord & Fortepiano, Primary Music Today & The Beekeepers Quarterly

David Fletcher is Chairman of the Thames Valley Early Music Forum which he helped set up in 1988. He is an enthusiastic cornettist, recorder player and singer who makes music several times a week with groups in London, Reading, Oxford and his home town of High Wycombe. David is a member of the Nema Council and, as a computer programmer by profession, he takes responsibility for the data-processing involved in producing the NEMA Yearbook.

Peter Holman studied at King’s College, London with Thurston Dart, and founded the pioneering early music group Ars Nova while a student. He is now director of The Parley of Instruments and the choir Psalmody, musical director of Opera Restor’d and musical director of Leeds Baroque Orchestra. He is a leading figure in the musical life of the Essex-Suffolk borders, directing Essex Baroque orchestra and the annual Suffolk Villages Festival. He was joint Artistic Director with Paul O’Dette of the 1995 Boston Early Music Festival. Peter has taught at many conservatories, universities, and summer schools in Britain, Europe and the USA, and was appointed Reader in Musicology at Leeds University in January 2000. He is a regular broadcaster on BBC Radio 3, and is much in demand as a lecturer at learned conferences. He spends much of his time in writing and research, and has special interests in the early history of the violin family, in instrumental ensemble music of the Renaissance and Baroque, and in English music from about 1550 to 1850. He is the author of the prize-winning book Four and Twenty Fiddlers: The Violin at the English Court 1540-1690 (Oxford, 1993), a much-praised study of Purcell’s music (Oxford, 1994), and a book in the Cambridge Music Handbook series on Dowland’s Lachrimae (Cambridge, 1999). Peter was Chairman of Nema until November 2003, and will continue to attend Council meetings as a member of the editorial board of Early Music Performer.

Glyn Russ, Administrator of the Early Music Network is a member of the Nema Council.

Bryan White studied at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas and at the University of Wales, Bangor. He lectures in music at the University of Leeds, and is an active performer, both as a soloist and choral singer, and as a choral director. Among his many musical interests are English opera, music for St Cecilia’s day, Michael Tippett, music editing, and performance practice. He has served as editor of Early Music Performer since 2002.

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