Paul Willenbrock

Paul Willenbrock’s first professional experience was as a choirboy in one of the Chapels Royal in London. A few years later he sang bass in the chapel choir at Trinity College Cambridge, where he studied German and French literature, completing these studies with an additional year at Hamburg University.

In 1980 he left England to settle in Paris and became active in the early music scene, singing with ensembles such as La Chapelle Royale, Collegium Vocale Gent, Les Arts Florissants, Organum, Balthasar Neumann Chor (Freiburg)… Stimulated, inspired and encouraged in very different ways by personalities as varied as William Christie, Robert Weddle, Graham O’Reilly, Howard Crook…

he concentrated on solo and consort work, both in the oratorio repertoire and with specialized one-voice-per-part groups throughout Europe, including Capella Regia and Musica Florea (Prague), Battalia (Helsinki), Balthasar Neumann Chor (Freiburg), Lucidarium and Daedalus (Switzerland), The Harp Consort (UK), and in France Ensemble William Byrd, Ensemble Gilles Binchois, Les Jardins de Courtoisie, Métamorphoses…

His passion for bringing unfamiliar music before the public led him to create TRE BASSI, to explore the rich sonorities of three bass voices singing together, in a repertoire ranging from the 14th century to the present day, further enriched by three bass instruments, the serpent, gamba and theorbo/chitarrone, played by three of the most exciting musicians of our time – Michel Godard, Hille Perl and Lee Santana.

He has also turned his attention to the pronunciation of English in the renaissance and baroque periods, and is regularly in demand as a language coach in this hitherto neglected field; thanks to this “restored” pronunciation we can actually pronounce rhymes in such a way that they really do rhyme!