Joshua Ellicott’s
sweet-toned, flexible yet powerful lyric tenor voice and versatile musicianship are apparent in the wide range of repertoire in which he excels, from song to opera to concert, and the list of conductors and ensembles with whom he works worldwide.
This season, he returns to the Lammermuir Festival to perform his ‘Jack’ recital, performs a recital with Anna Tilbrook and also sings James MacMillan’s All the Hills and Vales at The Cumnock Tryst festival, performs Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius in Nottingham, Handel’s Messiah with BBC NOW, Handel's Susanna with the Dunedin Consort at St Martin in the Fields and Wiener Konzerthaus, Bach’s St Matthew Passion (Evangelist) again with the Residentie Orkest under Richard Egarr, and a Handel programme with the Dresdner Philharmonie under Hans Christoph Rademann.
Joshua has developed a particular affinity with the works of Bach, Handel and Monteverdi and within that a special love for the role of the Evangelist in Bach’s Passions. He also enjoys interpreting later repertoire and he has been privileged to work with such luminaries as Sir Mark Elder, Daniel Harding and Esa Pekka Salonen in works as varied as Parsifal and Tristan und Isolde (Wagner) to The Seven Deadly Sins (Kurt Weill) and Wozzeck (Berg).
Song is another important feature of Joshua’s artistry. One of the greatest successes of recent years has been a programme devised around the First World War letters of Josh’s Great Uncle Jack in which through his dramatic readings of letters and interspersed song, audiences have been left deeply moved. A particularly special performance took place at the Cologne Early Music Festival where some of the letters were translated into German and read by Joshua.
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MacMillan All the Hills and Vales Along, The Cumnock Tryst Festival
(October 2024)
Each element is deployed to bring distinctive musical colour to the war poetry of Charles Hamilton Sorley, so that the brash militaristic opening drove the brass band and chorus savagely towards the bullets, while tenor Joshua Ellicott, the Everyman soldier-observer, sang with rapt intensity against the subtle beauty of the string quintet.
Simon Thompson, The Times****
From Your Ever-Loving Son Jack, Lammermuir Festival
(September 2024)
In the festival’s first weekend, the tenor Joshua Ellicott brought an inventive song recital based around the letters that his great uncle Jack sent home from the First World War – letters bursting with life, rendered deeply poignant by Jack’s death at the Somme in 1916. Ellicott read the letters and sang with such articulation and care as to invest every syllable wtith meaning, while the songs themselves were often shot through with that peculiarly British sense of restraint and were all the more moving as a consequence.
Simon Thompson, The Times
Joshua Ellicott has a remarkably focused, bright tenor which he uses with taste and musicality, taking us on an emotional journey from jollity to action and on to the aftermath of the young man’s demise. The highlights from the songs were Reynaldo Hahn’s The Stars, where the limpid piano and the ecstatic response to nature cannot help but remind you of Schubert, and the closing song, John Ireland’s Spring Sorrow, the rather cloying sentiments of Rupert Brooke given new emphasis as atmospheric reflections of the response to the young man’s death – given that his mother seems never to have accepted her son’s passing, that final line “And my heart puts forth its pain’ struck home with especial force.
Melanie Eskenazi, MusicOMH****
Only one tune, Haydn Wood’s Roses of Picardy, was a familiar World War One “hit”, and the recital climaxed in James MacMillan’s The Children, setting the words of William Soutar occasioned by the later horrors of the Spanish Civil War. Both of these were highlights, the former a melodic gem, and the MacMillan a brilliant exercise in working with very few notes to create something almost unbearably haunting. Young Jack died in France in August 1916 but his great-nephew found plenty of humour in the letters he sent, not least in allusions to female rivals for his affection back in Lancashire. The music of Frank Bridge, John Ireland, and Gerard Finzi and Frenchmen Francis Poulenc, Claude Debussy and Reynaldo Hahn, not only suited but in many cases also shared the benefits of this act of remembrance.
Keith Bruce, The Herald*****
Bach St Matthew Passion (Arias), The Bach Choir
Royal Festival Hall (March 2024)
All solo singers delivered their parts with utmost professionalism but two, in particular, caught my ears: soprano Nardus Williams and tenor Joshua Ellicott used their beautiful voices for nuanced phrasing and dynamics as well dramatic storytelling.
Agnes Kory, Seen and Heard International
Bach St Matthew Passion (Evangelist)
Deutsche Oper Berlin (May 2023)
Joshua Ellicott and Padraic Rowan led a first-rate vocal cast as the Evangelist and Jesus, respectively. Far from being an impassive narrator, Ellicott sang the part with full emotional involvement, his voice writhing and piercing the air as it retraced the events. In a veritable tour de force, he brought the secco recitatives to life thanks to well-designed phrasing and a strong melodic sense.
Elena Luporini, Bachtrack
In addition, Joshua Ellicott as an evangelist, Padraic Rowan as Jesus and alto Annika Schlicht emphasise the grandiosity of the performance.
Martina Hafner, Die Stimme Berlins
Handel Alexander's Feast, London Handel Festival
St George’s Hanover Square (February 2023)
Joshua Ellicott, replacing an indisposed Stuart Jackson, revealed an expansive tenor and his delivery style felt quite free and easy. This proved to be highly effective for relating events, as the role requires, and the audience soon forgot just how disparate the requirements placed on his singing were because everything felt so smooth.
Sam Smith, MusicOMH*****
Three fine soloists helped… Joshua Ellicott matched her [Lucy Crowe] for character.
Richard Morrison, The Times****
Handel Jephta (Title role), Internationale Bachakademie Stuttgart
Ludwigsburger Forum (October 2022)
The English tenor Joshua Ellicott creates this role with a wide range of expressions, finding a moving realization of Jephthah's despair in the second and third acts in particular.
Markus Dippold, Stuttgarter Zeitung
Tenor Joshua Ellicott performs the title role with phenomenal power of transformation… [he] envelopes his sense of mission with an abundance of sparkling crescendos and nuances.
Dietholf Zerweck, Ludwigsburger Kreiszeitung
And the solo cast was exquisite, too… Joshua Ellicott's passionate Jephtha.
Karl Georg Berg, Die Rheinpfalz
Caldara Maddalena ai piedi di Christo (Christ), Freiburger Barockorchester
(April 2022)
English tenor Joshua Ellicott embodies Christ with his majestic, grounded voice. Although his participation is limited to two arias, his direct and unmysterious broadcast assures him of a remarkable presence.
Frédérique Epin, Olyrix
CD: Ursa Minor: Chamber Music by Stuart MacRae (I am Prometheus)
Hebrides Ensemble (March 2022)
I am Prometheus and Parable (2018 and 2013, persuasively sung by Joshua Ellicott and Marcus Farnsworth respectively) explore complex character flaws and their far-reaching consequences.
Steph Power, BBC Music Magazine*****
Britten Nocturne, BBC SSO at the Lammermuir Festival
(September 2021)
A sprightly BBC SSO under the baton of Peter Whelan combined brilliantly with a nuanced performance from Joshua Ellicott in Britten’s delicious Nocturne for tenor and orchestra… Focus in the Nocturne fell on tenor Joshua Ellicott, the unspoilt sheen of his delivery capturing the shadowy essence, but also the ecstasy and humour, of Britten’s settings of verses by Shelley and Keats among others. Perfect for the opulent church acoustics.
Ken Walton, The Scotsman****
Handel Rodelinda (Grimoaldo), The English Concert
Linn Records CKD 658 (May 2021)
Joshua Ellicott’s […] sensitively sung scene of remorse … Highly recommended.
Hugh Canning, The Sunday Times (Album of the Week April 25)
After his superb Samson with the Dunedin Consort (Linn, 12/19), Joshua Ellicott excels as the villainous yet weakly vacillating Grimoaldo: from the snarling fury of his opening ‘Io gia t’amo’, egged on by spitting strings, to the drowsily softened tone of his final aria as Grimoaldo sings himself to sleep. … this new recording, more subtly directed and more consistently sung, now becomes my top recommendation for an opera that should be on any Handel lover’s shortlist.
Richard Wigmore, Gramophone
Against the odds, director Harry Bicket has gifted us the best ever recording of Rodelinda… As Grimoaldo, Joshua Ellicott textures his part finely. After machismo numbers, Ellicott brings to ‘Prigioniera ho l’alma in pena’ a fragility that affectingly reveals how Rodelinda’s rejection has broken his heart.
Berta Joncus, BBC Music Magazine*****
“[Ellicott] has his special moment in the great accompagnato ‘Fatto inferno’, where the superiority of his Italian …is given full play to produce one of the most dramatic passages in the performance.”
Brian Robins, Opera Magazine
…a first-rate lineup.
Fiona Maddocks, The Guardian
Joshua Ellicott eliciting a surprising amount of sympathy for the usurper Grimoaldo (particularly in his beguiling Act Three aria ‘Pastorello d’un povero armento’)
Katherine Cooper, Presto Classical (Recording of the Week)
“Vestiges of unfeigned affection are audible in tenor Joshua Ellicott’s complex, conflicted portrayal of Grimoaldo. Without neglecting the ferocity at the core of Grimoaldo’s subterfuges, his singing conveys unexpected fragility. The first of his arias in Act One, ‘Io già t’amai, ritrosa,’ is voiced with bemused vehemence.
He sings first ‘Prigioniera hò l’alma in pena’ and, later in the act [2], ‘Tuo drudo è mio rivale, tu sposo’ with close attention to the ways in which Händel’s vocal writing advances the character’s psychological development. Vividly intelligible in every scene in which he appears, Ellicott’s diction galvanizes this Rodelinda’s dramatic electricity in Act Three, baring Grimoaldo’s competing emotions in ‘Trà sospetti, affetti, e timori.’ Moreover, the tenor’s enunciation of the accompagnato ‘Fatto inferno è il mio petto’…”
Joseph Newsome, Voix des Arts
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