|
The English baritone and academic, Donald Greig, was born between Dunstable and Luton in England, a suitable location for someone who has ended up being an itinerant singer of early music; Dunstable is a famous 15th century English composer and Luton is infamous for its airport. A rather predictable though by no means preplanned life for a singer of early music followed: Chorister at Westminster Abbey Choir, Choral Scholar at Canterbury Cathedral. After getting a First in English and Film Studies at the University of Kent at Canterbury followed by post-grad work in Film Theory and despite serious attempts to fly in the face of such an upbringing (taking in lecturing in Film Studies and Semiology, reviewing films, early acting promise squandered in walk-on roles), he ended up in the early music 'scene' in London.
More by luck than judgement, Donald Greig was in the right place at the right time and joined The Tallis Scholars (Director: Peter Phillips) in 1985. Similar good fortune followed in 1988 when he was a founder member of the Orlando Consort. He remained an active member until the group disbanded in 2023, and was responsible for many of its innovative projects, most notably the live soundtrack of music composed or performed during the lifetime of Joan of Arc to accompany Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1928 silent-film classic, La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc. Along the way there has also sung with Westminster Cathedral, Gothic Voices, Taverner Consort (Director: Andrew Parrott), Fretwork, Gabrieli Consort (Director: Paul McCreesh), Cardinall's Musick, Cambridge Singers (Director: John Rutter), London Voices (Director: Terry Edwards), Metro Voices, The English Concert, and many choruses. Also active in the pop/session/musicals world and general "gun for hire", he is happy and eager to experiment with different vocal styles from pop to musicals. Hobbies include watching movies, TV, reading, listening to jazz, beer, shopping, sport, running, and following the unpredictable progress of the English cricket team. He also plan holidays and write.
His first novel, Time Will Tell (Thames River Press) was published in 2013. It is set in the world of early music, both in the present day and in the 15th century, where the behaviour of composers like Josquin and Ockeghem comes under close scrutiny. In the 1980's, he did some part-time lecturing at Goldsmiths, University of Kent, and University of Reading in Film and Semiology. He has given lectures and workshops in musicology at Harvard, Notre Dame, Peabody Institute, Vanderbilt University and at two annual meetings of the American Musicological Society. He has also published several academic articles - in Screen (on Hitchcock and sexual difference), Early Music, Tijdschrift van de Vereniging voor Nederlandse muziekgeschiedenis (on Ockeghem), Musical Times (on improvisation), contributed book reviews for The Musical Times and a chapter in The Cambridge Companion to Recorded Music. More recently, after completing a PhD in music at the University of Nottingham, he has written on film music, including articles for Music and the Moving Image, Music & Letters, French Screen Studies, and others, and his first academic book, Baroque Music and Cinema was published by Cambridge University Press in 2022.
Recordings with which Donald Greig would be happy to be associated are the Tallis Scholars' recording of Josquin's Pange lingua and La sol fa re mi masses, anything by Gothic Voices he has been fortunate enough to be involved with, and all of the Orlando Consort's recordings. |
