Ms Catherine Groom

I am Director of Music and a Bye-Fellow at Fitzwilliam College, where I direct Fitz Opera and Fitz Choir, co-ordinate music-making both secular and sacred across the College and supervise undergraduates at Fitz and across the University.

I have research interests in early modern Spain and the Netherlands, organology, migration histories, cultural history and materiality, psalm culture, theatre and maternity.

I am a baroque harpist (Gothic, Italian triple and Spanish cross-strung), an opera/theatre/choral conductor, a recorder player, a singer and a writer. I have played for theatre companies including the Royal Shakespeare Company and Shakespeare's Globe, in the West End including on the long-running RSC adaptations of Hilary Mantel's Mann Booker prizewinning novels Wolf Hall/Bring Up The Bodies, and in operas ranging from Monteverdi continuo playing to the world première of Louis Mander's opera Beowulf. I have appeared on soundtrack and on-screen on BBC1, BBC2, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and Netflix. Other highlights have included REEP-funded performance, teaching and recording in Morocco with Passamezzo and Ensemble Mogador Soufie.

I studied at Oxford University, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the Royal Academy of Music. My ongoing doctoral research at Oxford University in the migration of the Iberian cross-strung harp to the Netherlands and its implications for understanding Sephardic presence in Reformation cultural history is funded by a Clarendon Scholarship and the Campion Hall Hirsh-Loschert Scholarship.