Canadian tenor Kevin Skelton has performed on five continents with a wide array of musical ensembles. With a voice and musical sensitivity particularly suited to early music, Kevin specializes in seventeenth-century music, haute-contre repertoire, and the Bach Evangelist roles. Kevin works regularly with some of the world’s finest early music ensembles including the Nederlandse Bachvereniging, L’Arpeggiata, Concerto Palatino, and the Toronto Consort having performed in such renowned venues as the Concertgebouw and Carnegie Hall, and the early music festivals in Boston, Bruges, and Utrecht.
Recent concert appearances included performances in Festival de Saint Denis with L’Arpeggiata (Christina Pluhar), the Utrecht Early Music Festival and Festival of Flanders with RedHerring (Patrick Denecker), Transports Publics (Thomas Baeté) at the Gergiev Festival, Rosenmüller and Praetorius programmes with the Toronto Consort (David Fallis), in addition to several projects with the Nederlandse Bachvereniging (Jos van Veldhoven) in Japan and the Netherlands. Stage appearances included Daan Jaansen’s Les Aveugles with LOD, Utopia with Muziektheater Transparant, and Agostino Steffani’s Niobe, Regina di Tebe at the Boston Early Music Festival.
In recent years Kevin has begun a new initiative exploring the possibilities of combining classical singing and contemporary dance under the auspices of his ensemble Vox Æterna. Since then he has created several videos and been invited for two intensive residencies at wpZimmer in Antwerp, Belgium where he has created two live performances. Sol io premiered in 2012 at the Operadagen Rotterdam, and The Daily Routine was created later the same year in conjunction with the interdisciplinary theatre collective Het Geluid at the Musica Sacra Festival in Maastricht, Netherlands. Upcoming performances include Sol io at the Theater aan het Vrijthof in Maastricht, and a professional residency at the Bijloke in Gent, Belgium to create Divine Rapture, a production based on the Song of Songs. Divine Rapture will premiere at the Festival Les Nuits de Septembre (Festvial de Wallonie) in the autumn of 2013.
Concert performances this year include several productions with the Nederlandse Bachvereniging and Bl!ndman in addition to solo and consort appearances with BachPlus (Bart Naessens), Coqu (Erik van Nevel), Il Gardellino (Marcel Ponseele), Scherzi Musicali (Nicholas Achten), RedHerring (Patrick Denecker), Concerto Palatino (Bruce Dickey), and Transports Publics (Thomas Baeté). Opera performances include a concert version of Cavalli’s Gli amori d’Apollo e di Dafne with the Toronto Consort (David Fallis), a reprise of Les Aveugles at La Monnaie in Brussels, and MonteverdISH with the Dutch break-dance group ISH.
The recipient of numerous awards and scholarships, including grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council, Kevin holds graduate degrees in voice, conducting, and musicology having studied at the University of Toronto, Indiana University, and Oxford University. Kevin will publish his first book, Settle the Score: performer’s analysis for the classical singer, later this year.
