Tenor Mark Padmore came of age singing in choirs oriented toward Renaissance and Baroque music, and as a soloist, he has specialized in Baroque opera and choral music. His repertory, however, extends forward to Britten, Vaughan Williams, and contemporary choral music, and he has become one of Britain's most consistently popular singers. Padmore was born in London on March 8, 1961, but grew up in Canterbury. He studied clarinet and piano as a child but jumped at the chance to enter King's College, Cambridge, as a Choral Scholar and to join the Choir of King's College, Cambridge. That led, in turn, to admission to Cambridge as a student. He graduated in 1982 and immediately set about establishing himself as a singer. He sang at one time or another with the top Renaissance vocal groups of the 1980s: The Tallis Scholars, The Sixteen, and The Hilliard Ensemble. After numerous recordings with these groups, Padmore made his debut as a soloist in 1999 on the album J.S. Bach: Lutheran Masses, Vol. 1. He has also performed with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the Monteverdi Choir, and the instrumental ensemble Fretwork, among others. In the field of choral music, he is noted for his performances of Bach's major choral works, including those under Sir Simon Rattle with the Berlin Philharmonic. He has sung on top British operatic stages, performing music from Handel's Jephtha at the English National Opera, to Mozart's La clemenza di Tito under conductor René Jacobs in a Harmonia Mundi recording, to Harrison Birtwistle's The Corridor at the Aldeburgh Festival. He appeared as Peter Quint on BBC television in a production of Britten's The Turn of the Screw (a DVD of which won a Gramophone Award for best operatic recording), and as a recitalist, he has often performed the music of Britten, covering music written for the vocally similar Peter Pears. Padmore is a frequent guest at London's Wigmore Hall, often performing challenging contemporary music by the likes of Birtwistle, Mark-Anthony Turnage, Sally Beamish, and Huw Watkins. Padmore's recording catalog is extensive and deep. In 2000, he was heard on a second volume of Bach's Lutheran masses for Chandos, and he has continued to record for that label. In 2007, he made his debut on Harmonia Mundi with the Handel album As Steals the Morn, and he has recorded extensively for that label. In 2018, he recorded the Winterreise song cycle of Schubert, another composer he has favored, for Harmonia Mundi, accompanied by fortepianist Kristian Bezuidenhout. Padmore's solo recordings of the 2020s include a 2023 release featuring Schubert's Schwanengesang, D. 957, and Beethoven's An die ferne Geliebte, Op. 98. He continued to be in demand for performances on operatic and choral recordings, and by the mid-2020s, his recording catalog comprised more than 200 items. ~ James Manheim, Rovi