Deborah Roberts Soprano Death: London, England-born Early singer, Deborah Roberts has tragically died. The 62-year-old passed away over the weekend. Roberts was an amazing soprano, co-founder of ensemble and festival, artistic director.
Michele Pasotti announced the tragic incident on Facebook, she wrote: “It is difficult for me writing something about Deborah. But I would like to commemorate publicly, among many others, this great woman and what she did for Early Music. Amazing soprano, co-founder of ensemble and festival, artistic director. And a wonderful human being. Love and friendship won’t end. But you will be missed a lot. Grazie di tutto.”
Who Was Deborah Roberts?
Deborah Roberts was born on May 10, 1962, in London, England. Deborah Roberts, an English conductor and soprano, attended Lady Edridge Grammar School in Croydon (class of 1963).
She studied music at the University of Leicester (Class of 1974) and earned a Master of Arts degree in Renaissance and Baroque music editing and interpretation from Nottingham University in 1975. In 1981, she won the early music competition in Bruges, which allowed her to study under Andrea von Ramm in Basel.
Deborah Roberts has combined singing in professional early music ensembles with a range of other occupations such as teaching, researching, editing, and conducting since completing her studies.
Her major passion continues to be the Renaissance and early Baroque periods. She sang with The Tallis Scholars (Director: Peter Phillips) from 1978 to 2008, performing in over 1,200 concerts across the world and on over 60 recordings.
She was also privileged to participate in innumerable recordings of rare and exquisite music, getting a thorough understanding of the workings and beauty of Renaissance polyphony.
She has also performed solo and with a variety of early music ensembles and professional choirs, including the Consort of Musicke, the Deller Consort, Parley of Instruments, London Baroque (Director: Charles Medlam), and The English Concert (Director: Trevor Pinnock), meeting many wonderful and inspiring musicians along the way.
Solo records include a collection of Shakespeare songs with the Broadside Band and an odd album, “The Trumpet Collection,” in which she performs music from Monteverdi to Sir Henry Bishop with obbligato from a variety of vintage brass instruments.
Deborah Roberts has long been attracted by study and the discovery of new repertoire, performing techniques, and contexts. Her main musical passion, however, is the Italian Renaissance and early Baroque, where she can fully express her enthusiasm with both the Italian language and the highly decorative and rhetorical form of the music. She worked as a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Southampton on a project about female vocal ensembles in 16th-century Italy.
Deborah Roberts Musical History
Deborah Roberts began choral leading sixteen years ago. In 1990, she co-founded Musica Secreta, an ensemble of female voices and continuo, with Tallis Scholars singer Tessa Bonner, to research and perform a rapidly expanding repertoire of music, helping to re-establish women’s roles as performers, interpreters, and composers of music from the 16th and 17th centuries.
The ensemble consists of amateur and semi-professional singers ranging in age from eight to thirty, depending on repertoire, who frequently play with Musica Secreta while keeping their own concert calendar. She has been encouraged and assisted by the generosity of prominent academics, particularly Professor Laurie Stras of Southampton University, who joined her as a director of Musica Secreta and whose discoveries have opened even more doors into a hidden yet beautiful world.
The quintet swiftly acquired prominence under Roberts’ leadership, and in 1996 it received the coveted Noah Greenberg Award from the American Musicological Society. Roberts and her Musica Secreta ensemble received widespread recognition for their Linn Records CD “Dangerous Graces” in 2002, which received a Diapason Découverte in January 2003. The ensemble has now issued six CDs to high critical acclaim, with the most recent in September 2007.
One project with the ensemble involves performing convent music in partnership with historical author Sarah Dunant. Roberts’ 2009 holy art CD “Sacred Hearts, Secret Music” showcases the results of this rare cooperation. More recently, she founded the amateur female voice chorus Celestial Sirens, which performs both with Musica Secreta and independently. Since March 1998, she has served as musical director of the Brighton Early Music Festival (BREMF) Consort of Voices (BCV) (Brighton Consort), a small a cappella choir composed of semi-professional, student, and seasoned amateur singers. She now directs six or seven concerts each year including rare Renaissance repertory, much of it in her own editions.
In June 2002, she led a week-long seminar in Bruges, researching and singing her own edition of the Vespers psalms of nun composer Margarita Cozzolani. She has directed a number of Lacock courses, including the Cyprus Early Music Week and a performance of her rendition of the Cozzolani Vespers at Male Abbey near Bruges. She has delivered radio speeches and interviews about this music in the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom, most recently appearing on Woman’s Hour and In Tune.
Undoubtedly, co-founding and directing (with Clare Norburn) the Brighton Early Music Festival is a key driving force in her life. It began as a series of six concerts in 2002 and has since grown to become the UK’s second largest festival of its kind, as well as a major global cultural event.
It has established new standards for inventive programming, breaking down old barriers and reviving the living spirit and context of music and associated arts. As one of its creative directors, she is actively involved in developing the organization’s concert, workshop, and outreach programs. The festival has pioneered a number of ground-breaking programs, including Brighton Early Music Live, which brings young performers and early music into clubs and bars and is currently launching a three-year campaign to encourage singing throughout the region. Deborah altered the music for and supervised a performance of the 1589 Florentine Intermedi, replacing the original intricate stage apparatus with aerial dancers dangling from Europe’s tallest nave!
Although she primarily lives on the Hove seaside with her GP partner Maurice, they also own a beautiful house in Triora from which numerous early music classes are taught. Deborah Roberts spends her limited free time in Brighton, enjoying the sea, the downs, and lobsters fresh from the boat! When she has the leisure, she enjoys running, walking, sea swimming, scuba diving, keeping chickens, making cider, cultivating vegetables, and visiting Italy as much as possible.