John Potter
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John Potter

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John Potter is an author and singer, and is Reader Emeritus in Music at the University of York. His first book, Vocal Authority, was published by Cambridge University Press in 1998, and he is the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Singing (2000); Yale University Press published his Tenor: History of a Voice in 2009. He has contributed articles to many academic journals and chapters to other books, including the Cambridge History of Musical Performance (2012) and the Cambridge History of Medieval Music (2018). Cambridge University Press published his History of Singing in 2012 (jointly authored with ethnomusicologist Neil Sorrell, and now available in Polish from Astraia). His current book is Song: a History in 12 Parts (Yale University Press, 2023). This takes 12 songs as points of departure for a deeper look at the history of art song, the people who sang them, when and where, and for whom. It was a Country Life Best Book of 2023. Other recent writings include a chapter on the composer's vocal music in the biography of Gravin Bryars (Kahn & Averill, 2023) and a short history of the Hilliard Ensemble in the Decembe 2023 issue of Gramophone. As a singer John has partnerships with instrumentalists in various parts of the world. At the moment he is focusing on lute songs, which he performs with Ariel Abramovich and Jacob Heringman. Their ECM album Amores Pasados, with Swedish soprano Anna Maria Friman, topped the Amazon UK classical song chart with music written for them by rock musicians John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin), Tony Banks (Genesis) and Sting. John, Anna, Ariel and Jake perform under the name Alternative History. John's other albums for ECM include Being Dufay with British electro-acoustic composer Ambrose Field, and four albums with The Dowland Project, an ensemble that unites musicians from the worlds of early music and jazz. He has also performed and recorded for many years with the Gavin Bryars Ensemble, and contributed to more than a dozen albums by the German group The Sound and the Fury. He was a contributor to Cantum Pulcriorum Invenire, a research project at the University of Southampton, which has seen the release of three CDs of 12th century Conductus on Hyperion. John spent 18 years with the Hilliard Ensemble (whose CDs include the million-selling Officium) and his complete discography runs to more than 150 titles. He coaches vocal ensembles all over the world, and has produced several albums for the Scandinavian Trio Mediaeval. Until recently he chaired the ensemble contest jury at the Tampere Vocal Festival (Finland).
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