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The Swiss bass-baritone, Stephan MacLeod, was ten years at the Concervatoire de Musique de Geneve studying violin and piano. He started singing lessons with Mrs. Michele Moser in Geneva. At this time he also completed his final high-school exams. At the age of nineteen, he was accepted into the singing class of Ursula Buckel in Geneva, and at the same time was offered a position at the Cologne Musikhochschule studying with Kurt Moll. Then he studied with Gary Magby in Lausanne.
Stephan MacLeod won in 1991 in Switzerland various competition prizes in order to receive scholarships and in 1994 the Migros prize in Zürich and the T.V.S. prize in Hamburg, whereby he was invited to perform solo recitals in Geneva, Vevey, Cologne, Stuttgart, Bonn, Karlsruhe, Venice, Paris and in the USA.
Stephan MacLeod's repertoire goes from Renaissance and western European baroque music through to Mozart, Rossini or Fauré, to Arthur Honegger and Frank Martin, not forgetting the great German romantic Lieder composers.
Stephan MacLeod is particularly active in the oratorio repertoire, in which he has sung under Philippe Herreweghe, Michel Corboz, Daniel Harding, Gustav Leonhardt, Reinhard Goebel (Musica Antiqua Köln), Sigiswald Kuijken, Masaaki Suzuki (Bach Collegium Japan), Konrad Jünghanel (Cantus Cölln), Christophe Coin, Philippe Pierlot (Ricercar Consort), Stephen Stubbs (Tragicomedia), Helmut Rilling, Frieder Bernius, Jos van Immerseel (Anima Aeterna), Jesús López-Cobos, Theodor Guschlbauer, Dennis Russel Davies, Paul Van Nevel (Huelgas Ensemble, of which he was first bass for five years), John Duxbury, Grant Llewellyn, and many others. He has sung with such ensembles as the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, Freiburger Barockorchester, La Fenice and RIAS-Kammerchor, and with orchestras as L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, l'Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, l'Orchestre National de Lille, the Royal Flanders Philharmonic Orchestra, and l'Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, among others.
Stephan MacLeod has sung in operatic performances in Brussels (La Monnaie), Cologne, Bilbao and Geneva. He has been heard as a concert soloist in most of the main music centres and festivals of Europe, as well as in the USA, Canada, South America, China and Israel, and is a frequent visitor to Japan.
His work has been documented on many radio programmes and nearly thirty CD’s (BIS, Harmonia Mundi Deutschland, Channel Classics, Sony, Cascavelle, Accord, Marco Polo), several of which have won awards in the press.
Stephan MacLeod is currently completing his studies as a conductor and directs the Ensemble Gli Angeli Genève, which will give its first concert season at Geneva in 2005. |
