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The Canadian-American violinist and conductor, Scott Metcalfe, has gained wide recognition as one of North America’s leading specialists in music from the 15th through 17th centuries and beyond. He has been Musical and Artistic Director of Blue Heron since founding the ensemble with two singers in 1999. Blue Heron won the 2015 Noah Greenberg Award from the American Musicological Society and the 2018 Gramophone Classical Music Award for Early Music for its CD Music from the Peterhouse Partbooks, Vol. 5.
Scott Metcalfe obtained his Bachelor’s degree from Brown University (1985), where he majored in biology, and his Master of Music degree in historical performance practice from Harvard University (2005).
Scott Metcalfe founded the Cambridge Bach Ensemble in 1992 and it performed through 2000, issuing one (official) CD. The ensemble consisted of eight singers and continuo and its repertoire was primarily 17th-century German sacred music and the motets of J.S. Bach. He was also Music Director of New York City’s Green Mountain Project (Jolle Greenleaf, artistic director) from 2010 to 2017 and will be guest director again in January 2019. Their performances of Claudio Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 and other Vespers programs devised by Metcalfe have been hailed by The New York Times as “quite simply terrific” and by The Boston Globe as “stupendous.” He is a frequent guest director of TENET Vocal Artists (New York City) in repertoire ranging from Machaut and Du Fay through Charpentier, Purcell, and J.S. Bach, and he has been guest conductor of the Handel and Haydn Society (Boston), Emmanuel Music (Boston), The Tudor Choir and Seattle Baroque, Pacific Baroque Orchestra (Vancouver, British Columba), Quire Cleveland, and the Dryden Ensemble (Princeton, New Jersey). He also conducted Early Music America’s Young Performers Festival Ensemble in its inaugural performance at the 2011 Boston Early Music Festival.
Scott Metcalfe also enjoys a career as a Baroque violinist and currently plays with Les Délices (Director: Debra Nagy), L’Harmonie des Saisons (Director: Eric J. Milnes), and other ensembles. He played violin in Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, which was his main orchestral freelance job from 1987 to 1997, and he is on quite a number of their recordings from those years.He also played in every Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra from 1989 to 2003, including principal second violin and viola positions, and with Arion Baroque Orchestra in Montreal from 2006 to 2012.
Scott Metcalfe taught vocal ensemble repertoire and performance practice at Boston University from 2006 to 2015 and in 2016-2017 was director of the Baroque orchestra at Oberlin Conservatory. He has also taught at Harvard University (fall semester of 2017-2018).
Some of his research on the performance practice of English vocal music in the 16th and 17th centuries will be published as two chapters in Music, politics, and religion in early 17th-century Cambridge: the Peterhouse partbooks in context (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, forthcoming) and he is presently at work on a new edition of the songs of Gilles Binchois (c. 1400-1460). His edition of Francisco de Peñalosa’s Precor te, domine Jesu Christe was published by Antico Edition in 2017. Perhaps uniquely in the early music world, he is lead author of an article published in the Annals of Botany.
Scot Metcalfe lives in Watertown, Massachusetts with his family and enjoys biking, hiking, and all sorts of outdoor recreation. |
