Robin Bigwood - Biography
Robin Bigwood is one of the UK’s busiest harpsichordists, performing regularly as a soloist and as a continuo player with Passacaglia and Feinstein Ensemble, and also with London Baroque, The Sixteen, King’s Consort, Florilegium and Britten Sinfonia. He has also played with Parley of Instruments, European Union Chamber Orchestra, Musicians of the Globe and London Mozart Players.As a recitalist his repertoire encompasses all the major works of the Baroque period, by J S Bach, Handel, Francois Couperin and Rameau. He also has a special interest in the English ‘virginalist’ composers Byrd, Bull and their contemporaries, as well as the C17th French clavecinistes Jean-Henri d’Anglebert, Louis Couperin and Jacques-Champion de Chambonnieres.
Robin was brought up near Bristol in the UK, studied harpsichord and piano at the Royal College of Music and won the Broadwood Harpsichord Competition in 1995. He later had lessons with Jill Severs and Maggie Cole. He joined the chamber ensemble Passacaglia in 1996, and with them has played in most of the UK's major festivals, given South Bank and Wigmore Hall Master Series recitals, and toured in Europe and the United States. His contributions to Passacaglia’s recordings of Telemann, Boismortier and Dornel on the Linn and Naxos labels have met with critical acclaim. In 2009 he became a regular member of the Feinstein Ensemble, and plays with them in their busy series at St Martin in the Fields, London, and at the Purcell Room as part of the South Bank Centre’s Bach Weekend. Robin also enjoys two duo partnerships - with recorder player and baroque flautist Annabel Knight in Passacaglia Duo, and with Brook Street Band harpsichordist Carolyn Gibley in Cembalo Doppio.
Outside of performing, Robin has taught harpsichord at Centre for Young Musicians (London), Trinity College of Music and The Yehudi Menuhin School. He runs The Workshop Series, an acclaimed series of concerts held at the workshop of master harpsichord maker and restorer Malcolm Rose, and also assists with the website of The British Harpsichord Society. He is passionate about recording technology, has produced and engineered many successful CDs, and writes regularly for the respected recording magazine Sound on Sound. See the Intro page for links to websites detailing these other projects. He lives in Surrey in South East England with wife Annabel Knight and a black cat recently immortalised in a soundboard painting on Robin’s copy of the Anon 1667 French harpsichord, made by Alan Gotto.