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 in historical subjects 1400-1750, dissertations and electives in theatrical and sacred early modern music as well as in contemporary theatrical music. Following studies at Oxford University, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the Royal Academy of Music, my career as a musician has involved directing, improvising and composing, singing and playing a variety of instruments including Gothic/triple/electro harps and recorders (not to mention the Globe Theatre's immense thundersheet), writing about music for a variety of print and digital publications, and course leading on Goldsmiths, University of London's access to higher education summer programmes. I have played for a great many theatres and theatre companies including the Royal Shakespeare Company and Shakespeare's Globe Theatre and in the West End including on the long-running RSC adaptations of Hilary Mantel's Mann Booker prizewinning novels Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies, and in a great many operas ranging from Monteverdi continuo playing to the world première of Louis Mander's opera Beowulf. I have appeared on BBC1, BBC2, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5. Other highlights have included an inspiring long-running interfaith touring and recording project in Morocco with English ensemble Passamezzo and Sufi singer Abdou 'Voix de Vent' el-Haak. I also remain engaged on my own PhD exploring Spanish psalm praxis and Davidic art in the post-Reformation Netherlands among Catholic and Sephardic populations.