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The English tenor, Thomas Hal Herford, studied at Abingdon School in Abingdon, Oxfordshire. He began his singing career as a boy chorister in the Choir of New College, Oxford, and went on to study at Trinity College Cambridge and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. While on the Guildhall Opera Course he won numerous prizes and scholarships, and has since performed on many stages in both concert and operatic repertoire.
Stage roles include Il Cortigiano in L'Ospedale (Solomon's Knot Baroque Colective), Eisenstein in Die Fledermaus (Opera Danube), Imeneo in Bertoni's Orfeo (Bampton Classical Opera), Bad'un in Birtwistle's Yan Tan Tethera (Britten Sinfonia) and tenor roles in Gloria - A Pig Tale by HK Gruber (Mahogany Opera), Don Narciso in Il Turco in Italia and cover Don Ottavio in W.A. Mozart's Don Giovanni (Garsington Opera), Don Ramiro in La Cenerentola (Clonter Opera), Schoolmaster/Mosquito in Cunning Little Vixen at the Ryedale Festival, Florville in Il Signor Bruschino and Prunier in La Rondine (British Youth Opera), and Albert in Benjamin Britten's Albert Herring (GSMD). Last autumn he toured the USA with Ian Bostridge and the Britten Sinfonia, performing in B. Britten's Curlew River.
On the concert platform, Thomas Herford sings much of the core repertoire, from Monteverdi to Puccini and beyond, and has appeared at many of the UK's most important venues, including the Barbican, Wigmore Hall, St John's Smith Square, the Royal Festival Hall, and the Royal Albert Hall. He recently made debuts with both the Philharmonia Orchestra (Wagner gala, and W.A. Mozart's Requiem) and the London Symphony Orchestra (Two Sisters, A Rose, A flood and Snow by Alasdair Nicholson). He has sung many times on BBC Radio 3, most recently from Salisbury Cathedral as the tenor soloist in George Frideric Handel's Israel in Egypt.
Thomas Herford has relationships with several leading ensembles, including the Monteverdi Choir (Director: John Eliot Gardiner) and I Fagiolini (Director: Robert Hollingworth). He also enjoys working as part of small ensembles and values his strong links with the Solomon's Knot Baroque Colective (Director: Jonathan Sells), La Nuova Musica (Director: David Bates), and Sestina. He also sings as a member of the Choir of St Bride's, Fleet Street. With the early music consort Stile Antico, of which he was a member between 2006-2008, he recorded extensively, won a Gramophone Award, and toured Europe with the rock star Sting as part of his lute-song project.
Upcoming projects include a major European tour of J.S. Bach's St Matthew Passion (BWV 244) with Sir John Eliot Gardiner, concerts of Twentieth-Century French repertoire with I Fagiolini, and appearances at festivals in Aldeburgh, Germany and Switzerland with Solomon's Knot. He currently lives in London, England. |
