John Potter, Anna Maria Friman, Ariel Abramovich & Jacob Heringman
Biography John Potter, Anna Maria Friman, Ariel Abramovich & Jacob Heringman
John Potter
John Potter's musical collaborators include lutenist Ariel Abramovich, the Dowland Project, Red Byrd, the Gavin Bryars Ensemble and the German ensemble The Sound & The Fury. With fellow tenors Christopher O'Gorman and Rogers Covey-Crump he is a part of the Hyperion/University of Southampton Conductus Project. A writer and scholar as well as a singer, he has published four books on singing and is a former British Library Edison Fellow. He is Reader Emeritus in Music at the University of York, having left the university in 2010 to focus on his portfolio of freelance projects. His non-performing activities have included publishing articles and research papers, examining doctoral theses in Europe and the UK and coaching ensembles in Europe and the USA.
John's eclectic performing experience has ranged from first performances of works by Berio, Stockhausen, James Dillon, Arvo Pärt, Gavin Bryars and Michael Finnissy to backing vocals for Manfred Mann, Mike Oldfield and The Who (among others). Red Byrd, the group he founded with bass Richard Wistreich, has recorded music as diverse as Monteverdi (both straight and with electric guitars), Leonin (3 albums for Hyperion) and the Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones (for Factory Records). He was a major contributor to the Hilliard Ensemble's Officium project (for which he has five gold discs), and subsequently developed many of the ideas in The Dowland Project's four albums for ECM. He also produced the first three ECM albums by the Scandinavian Trio Mediaeval.
Current projects include new music for voices & lutes by Genesis keyboardist Tony Banks, Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones and Sting, and the Conductus Project will see three albums of 12th/13th century music for Hyperion. His lute song repertoire with Ariel Abramovich ranges from Thomas Ford to Benedetto Ferrari and beyond, and includes programmes of Dowland and Campion. He is also a regular contributor to the Sound & Fury's Paradise Regained CD series.
Anna Maria Friman
studied singing at the Barratt Due Institute of Music in Oslo and further with Linda Hirst and Barbara Bonney at Trinity College of Music in London. In 2008 Anna completed a PhD at the University of York, UK, where she was researching the modern performance of medieval music by women. From 2001-2007 she taught singing and coached vocal ensembles at the University of York. Anna has given workshops and seminars in Europe and USA, and has been a jury member at the vocal ensemble competition at the Tampere International Choral Festival, Finland, since 2001.
In addition to singing, she also plays the Norwegian traditional instrument Hardanger Fiddle.
Her current solo engagement include performances and recordings with the Amores Pasados project including the tenor John Potter and the lute players Ariel Abramovich and Jacob Heringman. The group has recently recorded two recordings for ECM Records that will be released in 2015.
In the Spring of 2015 Anna is starting a new project with Daniel Stighäll (Serikon). They have put together an exciting sextett of singers and instrumentalists (Maria Skiba, Anna Maria Friman, John Potter, Katharina Bäuml, Daniel Stighäll and Gawain Glenton) that will give their first time performance at the Trollhättans Tidig Musik dagar in May.
Anna also give duo concerts with her husband, the Norwegian trumpeter Arve Henriksen.
For thirteen years she has been a member of Gavin Bryars Ensemble. Bryars has composed music especially for her voice and together they have given concerts and radio broadcasts in Europe, Canada and Mexico.
Anna is a member of the vocal ensemble Trio Mediaeval that was founded in Oslo in 1997. The trio´s core repertoire features sacred monophonic and polyphonic medieval music from England, Italy and France, contemporary works written for the ensemble, as well as traditional Norwegian, Swedish and Icelandic ballads and songs, arranged by the group members. The trio has released six recordings on ECM Records. The latest Aquilonis (released in November 2014) immediately reached the Billboard Top 10 Classical music bestseller list, and was was included in The New York Times “Classical Critics Pick the Top Music Recordings of 2014”.
Trio Mediaeval has performed throughout Europe in a variety of venues: churches, cathedrals, monasteries, farms, clubs, industrial spaces, museums as well as prestigious halls such as Oslo Concert Hall, Bozar in Brussels, Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, London’s Wigmore Hall and the Vienna Konzerthaus. The group made its US debut in 2003. Since that first appearance, the trio has embarked on multiple North American tours, performing in 31 states, in cities across the continent. Highlights include concerts in New York’s Carnegie Hall, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the National Cathedral in Washington D.C., the Kennedy Center, engagements at San Francisco Performances and Spivey Hall, and broadcasts on American Public Media’s Saint Paul Sunday and Performance Today. In Asia, the trio has performed in Japan, Hong Kong and South Korea.
