Director's Bio
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John Bradley, Artistic Director, was born and educated in the Midwest, holding degrees from Kalamazoo College, Western Michigan University and Case Western Reserve University. He also spent one post-graduate year at Mannes College of Music. He has worked in many roles in the world of historically informed performance, from directing and costuming to dance, and of course singing. He has been involved with fully staged productions of Carl Heinrich Graun's Montezuma with the Arcadia Players, Henry Purcell's King Arthur with the Boston Early Music Festival, G.F. Handel's Alcina with Ex-Machina in Minneapolis and Handel's Dueling Sopranos with Julianne Baird and Beverly Hoch with the Philadelphia Classical Orchestra.
As a singer John’s credits include Monteverdi's 1610 Vespers with Artek and Bach's Saint John Passion with Artek and New Jersey Bach Festival. One of John's favorite gigs was as a baroque chorus boy in a tour of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas with Amherst Early Music, in which he was a singer as well as a featured dancer John has enjoyed learning from some of the greatest artists in the field of early music most recently as a student of Drew Minter.
John’s first and last love is small ensemble singing combined with research into the synthesis of music and liturgy. He has assembled several liturgical reconstructions including masses and vespers from pre-Reformation England, 16th-century Spain and Imperial Germany. Since 2000, John has been actively researching and creating original editions of Renaissance choral masterworks for Polyhymnia, focusing on composers Clemens non Papa and Jacob Vaet. In 2005 John's new edition of Vaet's Missa Ego flos campi was performed in Boston as a Boston Early Music Festival fringe event. He has also completed new editions of Nicholas Gombert's Missa Quam pulchra es et quam decora and 12-voice Regina Caeli, Cristobal de Morales Missa pro defunctis, in a liturgical reconstruction, all of which were also performed at the Boston Early Music Festival Fringe concerts. He has since continued to edit masses and motets concentrating on Franco-Flemish and Tudor composers. John's most recent major research project was the reconstruction of a liturgy for the Feast of St. Patrick in Dublin c.1520, for which the centerpiece was his new edition of John Taverner's Missa Gloria tibi Trinitas performed in March 2011. He has just completed a survey of eight-voice motets by Lassus and is looking for a much deserved break and the opportunity to conduct music someone else has edited. John and his husband Charles live in an Art-Deco building in the Lincoln Park neighborhood - with a lot of potential - in Jersey City, NJ with their two much-loved and over-fed cats, Moses and Abraham.
As a singer John’s credits include Monteverdi's 1610 Vespers with Artek and Bach's Saint John Passion with Artek and New Jersey Bach Festival. One of John's favorite gigs was as a baroque chorus boy in a tour of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas with Amherst Early Music, in which he was a singer as well as a featured dancer John has enjoyed learning from some of the greatest artists in the field of early music most recently as a student of Drew Minter.
John’s first and last love is small ensemble singing combined with research into the synthesis of music and liturgy. He has assembled several liturgical reconstructions including masses and vespers from pre-Reformation England, 16th-century Spain and Imperial Germany. Since 2000, John has been actively researching and creating original editions of Renaissance choral masterworks for Polyhymnia, focusing on composers Clemens non Papa and Jacob Vaet. In 2005 John's new edition of Vaet's Missa Ego flos campi was performed in Boston as a Boston Early Music Festival fringe event. He has also completed new editions of Nicholas Gombert's Missa Quam pulchra es et quam decora and 12-voice Regina Caeli, Cristobal de Morales Missa pro defunctis, in a liturgical reconstruction, all of which were also performed at the Boston Early Music Festival Fringe concerts. He has since continued to edit masses and motets concentrating on Franco-Flemish and Tudor composers. John's most recent major research project was the reconstruction of a liturgy for the Feast of St. Patrick in Dublin c.1520, for which the centerpiece was his new edition of John Taverner's Missa Gloria tibi Trinitas performed in March 2011. He has just completed a survey of eight-voice motets by Lassus and is looking for a much deserved break and the opportunity to conduct music someone else has edited. John and his husband Charles live in an Art-Deco building in the Lincoln Park neighborhood - with a lot of potential - in Jersey City, NJ with their two much-loved and over-fed cats, Moses and Abraham.