Andrew Kirkman, Director of CEMPR
Andrew Kirkman studied at the universities of Durham, London (King’s College) and Princeton, and has worked at the universities of Manchester, Wales, Oxford and Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. He is currently Peyton and Barber Professor of Music at Birmingham. His research centres on sacred music of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, and he has published and lectured widely on English and continental music of the period.
He is director of the award-winning 'Binchois Consort,' which records little-known Renaissance repertory on the Hyperion label. The group has made ten recordings, all on the Hyperion label. Its recordings and performances, of music by Du Fay, Binchois, Josquin, Busnoys and others, have received universally strong critical acclaim and many music industry prizes, including Gramophone ‘Early Music Recording of the Year’ in 1999 for its recording ‘Music for St James the Greater by Guillaume Du Fay.’ At Rutgers University he was director of the Collegium Musicum (a small Renaissance chamber choir), which under his directorship issued a number of CDs, and Musica Raritana, a baroque/ classical orchestra formed with the aim to provide students with learning and performance opportunities in baroque and classical performance styles, coached by major players in the field. Its recording of Early Works for Piano and Strings by Mendelssohn has recently been released on the Affetto label. At Birmingham since 2011, he has mounted similar projects with the University Chamber Orchestra, Birmingham University Singers, and the Early Modern Vocal Ensemble, as well as teaching on a wide range of topics from the fifteenth to the twentieth century. He has also had a busy career as a freelance violinist, and recently, with pianist Clipper Erickson, released a world-premiere recording of violin sonatas by Cyril Scott.
Contact: a.kirkman@bham.ac.uk
Academic staff
Lecturer in Music
Department of Music
I specialize in seventeenth-century Italian singers, singing culture, vocal music and early modern gender construction. My approach to research is interdisciplinary, employing methodologies from art history, critical theory, gender studies, and performance studies.
Emeritus Professor of Music History
Department of Music
I am a specialist in Italian music of the late 16th and early 17th centuries and, in particular, on the music of Claudio Monteverdi. From 2001 to 2011, as Head of Department, I successfully argued for new facilities for University music, drew up an architects’ brief for a new building and led the departmental team during the processes of developing the plans, fundraising, and constructing ...