AFFETTO BIOGRAPHIES
PHILIP GRIFFIN - Theorbo, Baroque Guitar, Oud and Voice.
Philip Griffin is an instrumentalist, singer, accompanist, composer and music director with experience in a wide variety of musical styles. He has played many different sorts of plucked-stringed instruments including lutes from Afghanistan, Turkey, Greece; guitars, vihuela, ukulele, charango. Performances have included tours throughout New Zealand, Australia and several European countries at festivals and concert venues. His musical tastes and experience extends from early music to world premieres of contemporary operas, also jazz, rock and folk musics. He has written theatre music for such companies as The Royal Shakespeare Company, Sydney Theatre Company and State Theatre of South Australia, has conducted choirs and music theatre works and has a Masters Degree with First Class Honours in classical singing from the University of Auckland.
RACHAEL GRIFFITHS-HUGHES - Harpsichord and Organ
Rachael Griffiths-Hughes is Senior Lecturer at the University of Waikato Conservatorium of Music, where she teaches Music History, Harpsichord and Organ and Musicianship. She is director of the University Chamber Choir, Director of Music at St. Peter’s Cathedral, Hamilton, and for 15 years was conductor and Music Director of the Hamilton Civic Choir.
In 2014, Rachael formed the ensemble Vox Baroque, a 12-voice choir who perform 17th and 18th century cantatas once a month, with a small band of instrumentalists. She has also recently performed and recorded with NZBarok, and is working on a project with Lara Hall, investigating and recording 18th century English music for violin and harpsichord.
PETER REID - Cornetto, Baroque Trumpet
Peter Reid started the cornetto and baroque trumpet while at the Trinity College of Music in London. He subsequently played in the UK and Europe before returning to Auckland in 2003. Since then, he has toured with Chamber Music New Zealand in 2008, plays for Affetto and The Age of Discovery, for Musica Sacra in Wellington, for La Compania and for Academia Arcadia in Melbourne and with the Sydney Philharmonia Chamber Orchestra.
POLLY SUSSEX - Viola da gamba, Baroque Cello, Pardessus
Polly Sussex performs, teaches and researches Baroque Cello and Viola da Gamba music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. She trained initially in traditional cello playing at the Akademie musickych umeni in Prague and in London at the Royal Academy of Music, then privately with William Pleeth . After obtaining her Ph. D in Music at the University of Otago, Polly performed freelance. In 2007 and 2008, Polly undertook further study in the Viol and Early Music at the Hochschule fuer Kuenste, Bremen, North Germany and in Basel, Switzerland. She plays all sizes of Viol, including the tiny Pardessus, much loved by French ladies of the aristocracy before the French Revolution.
JAYNE TANKERSLEY - Soprano
Jayne Tankersley is one of New Zealand's most experienced singers of Baroque, Renaissance and Medieval music. From 1999 - 2006 she was based in Boston USA, where she completed a Masters degree in Early Music Vocal Performance at the Longy School of Music, and appeared as soloist with some of the leading period groups of America, including the Boston Early Music Festival, Handel and Haydn Society, Apollo's Fire, Boston Baroque, Boston Cecilia, Tragicomedia, Medieval trio Liber UnUsualis, the Christmas Revels of both Cambridge and Houston, and with conductor William Christie.
She has recorded for Revels, Boston Baroque, Schirmer Publishing, and with the BeggarBoys on their 2004 CD The Darkest Midnight. Since returning to New Zealand she has appeared with all of the premier early music ensembles in the country.