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The Sudanian counter-tenor, Magid El-Bushra, studied Music as an undergraduate at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he also held a Choral Scholarship. He continued his studies at the Royal College of Music in London, where he won the Century Prize for Early Music. He subsequently studied at the Flanders Opera Studio in Ghent, Belgium, where his roles included Arcetro in Caccini's Euridice, Baba the Turk in Igor Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress, and scenes from W.A. Mozart's Ascanio in Alba (Ascanio) and Mitridate (Farnace), and Rossini's Tancredi (Tancredi).
Magid El-Bushra has performed the Sorceress in Purcell's Dido and Aeneas with Opera Fuoco/David Stern at the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, and La Tragedia/Dafne in Caccini's Euridice in Bruges as part of the Festival van Vlaanderen with Scherzi Musicali/Nicolas Achten (recorded for Ricercar). He has also appeared in Monteverdi's Orfeo with Les Arts Florissants/William Christie at the Teatro Real, Madrid (available as a DVD on Dynamic), and in the opera Callirhoé by Destouches, with Le Concert Spirituel/Hervé Niquet at the Opéra Nationale de Montpellier (recorded for Glossa). He covered the role of Nireno in Glyndebourne Festival Opera's 2009 revival of George Frideric Handel's Giulio Cesare, as well as covering Oberon in Benjamin Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream for British Youth Opera.
On the concert platform Magid El-Bushra has performed as a soloist in Charpentier's Epitaphium Carpentarii with Il Seminario Musicale/Gérard Lesne which was broadcast from the Chapelle Royale de Versailles on French national television (available as a DVD on Armide, and as a CD on Zig Zag); Giovanni Battista Pergolesi's Stabat Mater at the Casa Da Musica, Porto under the direction of Laurence Cummings; Dietrich Buxtehude's Das Jüngste Gericht with Masaaki Suzuki and the Sendai Baroque Ensemble in Japan; J.S. Bach's Mass in G and Mass in A (BWV 234-235) with Ensemble Pygmalion/Raphaël Pichon at the Festival de la Chaise Dieu (recorded for Alpha - Diapason d'Or de l'Année 2008); the premiere of Klaus Huber's Miserere Hominibus at the Opéra Bastille, Paris with Les Jeunes Solistes/Rachid Safir, with subsequent performances at the Lucerne Festival, the festival Musica de Strasbourg, the Dresden Festspielhaus, the Casa da Musica, Porto, the Schwäbisch-Gmünd Festival in Stuttgart, the Alter Musik Festival in Berlin, and the Weimar Tonhalle (also recorded for Soupir), and the premiere of Robert HP Platz' Boutaden for the Westdeustcherundfunk in Cologne.
Magid El-Bushra has appeared in numerous broadcasts for BBC Radio 3, Radio Suisse and Radio France. He is a founder member of the Baroque ensemble La Sfera Musicale, with which he has toured Sweden and Japan, where they won the top prize at the 2005 International Early Music Competition in Yamanashi. They were also prize-winners at the 2006 Early Music Competition in Bruges. Recent oratorio engagements have included G.F. Handel's Israel in Egypt and J.S. Bach's Magnificat (BWV 243) at the Cadogan Hall, G.F. Handel's Dixit Dominus and Antonio Vivaldi's Gloria at St Martin in the Fields, and J.S. Bach's St Matthew Passion (BWV 244) at Carlisle Cathedral. He also recorded the Pie Jesu in the Requiem of Maurice Duruflé (Harmonia Mundi). Future engagements include the Sorceress in Purcell's Dido and Aeneas at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées, Paris, his debut at the Oldenburgisches Staatstheater in Nachtwache, and a solo recital of lute songs at de Bijloke, Ghent.
In November 2008, Magid El-Bushra won first prize at the Concorso Musica Sacra in Rome, and is now a member of the ensemble I Virtuosi Della Musica Sacra. |
