Edward Wickham

Edward Wickham is a Fellow and Director of Music at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge. He combines his duties in Cambridge with performing engagements throughout the world, principally with The Clerks, the vocal ensemble which he formed in 1992.

Dr Wickham read Modern History at Christ Church, Oxford where he was also a choral scholar. His performing interests the led him to read for an MA in Medieval Studies at King’s College, London and finally a PhD in Music, also at KCL, under the supervision of Reinhard Strohm. He lectures and supervises on 15th and 16th century music and on the history of musical notation.

With The Clerks, Dr Wickham has made a series of ground-breaking recordings, principally of Franco-Flemish Renaissance music. In 2001 the ensemble completed an award-winning survey of the music of Jean Ockeghem and more recent projects have included first-time recordings of polyphony by composers such as Josquin, Barbireau and Regis. With The Clerks, Edward Wickham has pioneered the practice of singing from manuscript notation, a process which has informed many of the group’s recordings and live performances.

In recent years, Dr Wickham has been exploring, through collaborative and experimental projects, modes of performance which break out of the traditional Western classical tradition. With multi-media sound installations, partnerships with singers from the Middle East, and ground-breaking educational and outreach programmes, he is committed to pursuing an idiosyncratic agenda of artistic innovation and social participation. His latest project, funded by an Arts Award from the Wellcome Trust, entails an investigation of the phenomenon of ‘auditory streaming’ in complex, poly-textual music.