Director: Theresa Caudle
THERESA CAUDLE comes from a musical family with a particularly keen interest in renaissance and baroque music. Having studied the violin from an early age, Theresa took up the cornett at the age of thirteen, becoming one of the foremost performers on it whilst still a teenager and a pioneer in the revival of this instrument, being the first person to play it at a professional level with the authentic, acorn shaped mouthpiece. Whilst still at school she took part in many professional concerts and recordings with groups such as Musica Reservata, The William Byrd Choir and The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, and celebrated leaving school by going to Berlin the next day to play in a European Union broadcast performance of Monteverdi’s “L’Orfeo” in the Berlin Philharmonic Hall! Theresa then pursued her studies on the violin at The Guildhall School of Music and Drama where she was awarded a scholarship to study the baroque violin, and was the first person to receive a diploma on that instrument.
Theresa regularly leads The Hanover Band, and plays with The London Handel Orchestra and The Monteverdi String Band. However she is now very active running and directing her own ensemble Canzona, formed in 1992, both in chamber music concerts and in collaborations with choirs. With this ensemble she has been proud to lead many performances of the great baroque masterpieces by Bach and Handel for conductors such as Harry Christophers, Stephen Layton and Brian Kay, and to play with many wonderful singers such as James Bowman, Emma Kirkby and Peter Harvey. In addition to leading Canzona, Theresa has led many other orchestras such as The Sixteen, English Touring Opera’s baroque orchestra The Old Street Band,The Drottningholm Court Theatre Orchestra and the Polish group, L’arte dei Suonatore. She is also the leader of Orpheus Britannicus, resident ensemble at Trinity Hall College, Cambridge.
Theresa enjoys teaching at all levels and ages and has several private pupils. She has coached at The Royal Academy of Music and at Birmingham and Leeds Universities and has acted as a specialist examiner for final recitals at The Royal Academy and Royal College of Music. She runs several courses in baroque playing styles at Benslow Music Trust in Hitchin and at Jackdaws near Frome, and is artistic director of “Baroque Week”, now held at Queen Anne’s School, Caversham. In 2004 she was one of the professors on “The Winter School” course for baroque music in Dubrovnik, which gathered students from throughout the former Yugoslavia. That visit led to a fruitful collaboration with the leader of the Croatian Baroque Ensemble and Theresa has revisited Croatia several times since to direct programmes with this ensemble and to coach students at the Academy in Zagreb in baroque performance practice.
Although Theresa never entirely forsook the cornett, recently she has been devoting more time and energy to it; her recording of seventeenth century Italian sonatas “Violino o Cornetto”, on which she plays both cornett and violin, was released on the Nimbus Alliance label in 2010.
© Eric Richmond
Theresa Caudle……
Whilst pursuing her studies on the violin, she became director of The London Cornett
and Sackbut Ensemble and, over the next few years, travelled with this group all
over Europe as well as making many recordings, including Monteverdi's "L’Orfeo"
for Decca and Matthew Locke's "Music for His Majesty's Sagbutts and Cornetts" for
EMI Reflexe. As a string player, shortly after leaving college Theresa became a member
of several of the leading authentic instrument groups at that time, The English Concert,
The English Baroque Soloists, The London Handel Orchestra and The Parley of Instruments,
and over the years she became much more active as a violinist, viola and viola d’amore
player than as a cornettist. In the early 1980s Theresa first went to Sweden to play
in the Drottningholm Court Theatre Orchestra in their production of Mozart’s “Così
fan Tutte” which was recorded for Swedish TV and for Decca; the following year she
became principal second violin, a post she held for nine years, taking part in the
ground-
© Eric Richmond
© Eric Richmond
Contact us……
For further information please e-
Jill Caudle, General Manager -
e-
Polly Smith, Marketing Manager -
Theresa Caudle, Director -
e-
Canzona Ltd -
