Membership of Council is by invitation and is based principally on research record. Membership is not limited to staff of academic institutions, three of the most distinguished and active founding members (Winton Dean, Anthony Hicks, and Terence Best) accomplishing their research as independent scholars.
Trustees
Donald Burrows (chair)
Emeritus Professor of Music, Open University, and Vice-President, Händel-Gesellschaft. Joint General Editor of the Hallische Händel-Ausgabe. His publications about Handel include six books and 25 music editions.
Laurence Cummings
Conductor and harpsichordist. Musical Director of the London Handel Festival, Artistic Director of the Göttingen Handel Festival, Music Director of the Orquestra Barroca Casa da Musica, and William Crotch Professor of Historical Performance at the Royal Academy of Music.
Linda Wong Davies
Lady Linda Wong Davies is the founder and chair of the KT Wong Foundation, which works across the arts to promote cultural bridges between China and the West. Previous projects have included BBC documentaries, and new commissions for BBC Proms. In 2009 she produced Semele which subsequently was the first baroque opera to be staged in China. She is establishing the first Baroque education residency between the UK and China.
John Deathridge
Emeritus Professor of Music, King’s College London. Organist and choirmaster, St Wolfgang’s, Munich, 1971–81. An editor of Richard Wagner: Sämtliche Werke. Publications include The Ring of the Nibelung (Penguin, 2018).
John Greenacombe
Visiting Research Fellow at the Open University. Publications include George Frideric Handel: Collected Documents and the Knightsbridge volume in the Survey of London.
Andrew Jones
Emeritus Senior Lecturer in Music, University of Cambridge, and Fellow Emeritus, Selwyn College. Publications include the Hallische Händel-Ausgabe Rodelinda and (forthcoming) the complete cantatas for solo voice and basso continuo. Founder and Music Director of the Cambridge Handel Opera Group, 1985–2013.
Curtis Price
A musicologist who has written books and articles on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century performance practice, English dramatic music and Italian opera. He was lecturer, then professor, at King’s College London (1981–95), Principal of the Royal Academy of Music (1995–2008) and Warden of New College Oxford (2009–16).
Peter Smaill
Having been a chorister and studied law and accountancy, Peter Smaill pursued a career in private equity. His interest in Baroque music was rekindled by the Bach anniversary in 2000, and he was chairman and treasurer of the UK charity Bach Network from 2010 to 2017. He has done research on John Frederick Lampe and on London’s eighteenth-century Lutheran churches, and promotes concerts with the Dunedin Consort in Midlothian, where he is a councillor and county Provost.
Ruth Smith
Freelance writer, lecturer and broadcaster. Publications include Handel’s Oratorios and Eighteenth-Century Thought and an illustrated life of Charles Jennens.
Colin Timms
Emeritus Professor of Music, University of Birmingham, trustee of the Gerald Coke Handel Foundation (1998–2019), and member of the Hallische Händel-Ausgabe Editorial Board. Publications include Polymath of the Baroque: Agostino Steffani and His Music and editions of Theodora (Hallische Händel-Ausgabe) and Comus (Novello). He co-edited Music in the London Theatre from Purcell to Handel (2017).
Council Members
Donald Burrows (chair)
Emeritus Professor of Music, Open University, and Vice-President, Händel-Gesellschaft. Joint General Editor of the Hallische Händel-Ausgabe. His publications about Handel include six books and 25 music editions.
Carrie Churnside
Senior Lecturer in Music, Royal Birmingham Conservatoire (part of Birmingham City University). Research focuses on Italian music immediately before and during Handel’s lifetime, including publications on late seventeenth-century cantatas and Transitions in Mid-Baroque Music: Style, Genre and Performance (edited collection, forthcoming).
Helen Coffey
Senior Lecturer in Music at the Open University. Publications include George Frideric Handel: Collected Documents and Handel in Context (forthcoming).
Matthew Gardner
Junior Professor of Musicology at the Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen and member of the Hallische Händel-Ausgabe Editorial Board. Publications include Handel and Maurice Greene’s Circle at the Apollo Academy, Music and the Benefit Performance in Eighteenth-Century Britain (co-edited with Alison DeSimone), and an edition of Handel’s Wedding Anthems.
Berta Joncus
Senior Lecturer, and Head of Post-Graduate Studies, Department of Music, Goldsmiths, University of London. Publications include Kitty Clive, or the Fair Songster (Boydell, 2019), and the critical edition of Love in a Village (Bärenreiter, 2019). Previous projects include Ballad Operas Online and ‘The Stage’s Glory’: John Rich.
Andrew Jones
Emeritus Senior Lecturer in Music, University of Cambridge, and Fellow Emeritus, Selwyn College. Publications include the Hallische Händel-Ausgabe Rodelinda and (forthcoming) the complete cantatas for solo voice and basso continuo. Founder and Music Director of the Cambridge Handel Opera Group, 1985–2013.
Sylvia Levi
Chartered accountant with a background in financial services regulation, and experience of the treasurership of several charities. Longstanding interest in the Baroque period and the music of Handel and his associates.
Curtis Price
A musicologist who has written books and articles on 17th- and 18-century performance practice, English dramatic music and Italian opera. He was lecturer, then professor, at King’s College London (1981–95), Principal of the Royal Academy of Music (1995–2008) and Warden of New College Oxford (2009–16).
Ruth Smith
Freelance writer, lecturer and broadcaster. Publications include Handel’s Oratorios and Eighteenth-Century Thought and an illustrated life of Charles Jennens.
Reinhard Strohm
Emeritus Professor of Music, Oxford University. Publications include Essays on Handel and Italian Opera (1985), Dramma per Musica: Italian Opera Seria of the Eighteenth Century (1997) and Studies on a Global History of Music (2018).
Colin Timms
Emeritus Professor of Music, University of Birmingham, trustee of the Gerald Coke Handel Foundation (1998–2019), and member of the Hallische Händel-Ausgabe Editorial Board. Publications include Polymath of the Baroque: Agostino Steffani and His Music and editions of Theodora (Hallische Händel-Ausgabe) and Comus (Novello). He co-edited Music in the London Theatre from Purcell to Handel (2017).
Natassa Varka
Independent scholar, whose PhD on Charles Jennens’s copies of Handel’s sacred oratorios (King’s College, Cambridge, 2017) was awarded the Georg-Friedrich-Händel-Gesellschaft International Handel Research Prize 2019. Current projects include editing Belshazzar for the Hallische Händel-Ausgabe and adapting her PhD for publication by the Stiftung Händel-Haus.
David Vickers
Lecturer in Academic Studies, Royal Northern College of Music. Co-editor of The Cambridge Handel Encyclopedia. Current projects include editing Partenope (Hallische Händel-Ausgabe) and New Perspectives on Handel’s Music: Essays in Honour of Donald Burrows (Boydell, forthcoming), and rediscovering the repertoire of early eighteenth-century singers.
Silas Wollston
Freelance performer, and Affiliated Lecturer at Cambridge University. Editor of Handel’s Hercules for the Hallische Händel-Ausgabe and author of research on Handel’s instrumental works and compositional process.
Lawrence Zazzo
Professional countertenor, formerly on the vocal faculties of the Royal College and the Royal Academy of Music, and currently Head of Performance and Lecturer in Music at Newcastle University. Recordings include six of Handel’s operas and four of his oratorios. Currently working on a recording of Handel alto cantatas and articles on Handel’s L’Allegro and Semele.