Born in Liverpool, Nicholas Mulroy read Modern Languages at Cambridge before postgraduate studies at Royal Academy of Music. He has appeared with many of the world’s leading ensembles, and has enjoyed many different approaches to music-making.
He is particularly noted for his lyrical and narrative interpretation of Bach’s music. Singing from memory, his performances as the Evangelist in the St Matthew Passions have been widely praised and was described by The Times as “a thing of wonder… Every phrase, every word was turned over carefully so as to heighten the storytelling.” Working with leading conductors and ensembles worldwide his highlights have included performances of the passions at the BBC Proms, Sydney Opera House and Bach’s two churches in Leipzig – the Thomaskirche and the Nikolaikirche.
Nicholas Mulroy has frequently sung with many leading early music ensembles, including a long association with John Butt and the Dunedin Consort. He has also worked regularly with the Gabrieli Consort, Monteverdi Choir, Concerto Copenhagen, Le Concert d’Astrée, Academy of Ancient Music, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Le Concert des Nations, Les Musiciens du Louvre, International Bachakademie Stuttgart and Handel and Haydn Society Boston. Other major orchestras he has appeared with include Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Concerrgebouworkest, St Paul Chamber Orchestra, Antwerp and Melbourne symphonies, Brussels and Copenhagen philharmonics, Royal Northern Sinfonia, Britten Sinfonia and Australian Chamber Orchestra.
He is devoted to recital repertoire, and has appeared regularly at the Wigmore Hall, in a wide range of music from Purcell’s Harmonia Sacra with regular collaborator Elizabeth Kenny, to songs by Schubert, Stephen Hough, and the complete Britten Canticles. He has also appeared frequently at the Lammermuir Festival and at the Bath, Ludlow, Maribor, St Magnus, and BRQ Festivals. His ongoing collaboration with guitarist/theorbist Toby Carr explores a rare combination of music from two golden ages – 17th-century Europe and 20th Century Latin America and will be released on disc in 2024.
His extensive discography includes music across seven centuries, including the St Matthew Passion and a Gramophone Award-winning Messiah with Dunedin Consort. He has made three recordings of the St John Passion (Dunedin Consort, Concerto Copenhagen and Polyphony/OAE) and five of the Monteverdi Vespers of 1610. Away from the baroque he has recorded Stravinsky with Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Piazzolla’s María de Buenos Aires with Mr McFall’s Chamber.
In recent years, Nicholas Mulroy has enjoyed success in directing, including several choral programmes, as well as Bach’s St Matthew Passion at Wigmore Hall and a curated programme of Bach, Purcell and Latin American music with Aurora Orchestra. In 2020, he was appointed Associate Director of the Dunedin Consort.
He is a Visiting Professor at the Royal Academy of Music, and a Musician in Residence at Girton College, Cambridge.
This biography is for information only and should not be reproduced.
Bach's St John Passion with the Dunedin Consort
Chicago, November 2024
Mulroy’s narration was attentive to the text without veering into over-expression. This made his few moments of strong underlining—such as the brief moment of Sprechstimme during the choosing of Barrabas or the surprising tenderness during Jesus’s death—all the more notable.
John Y. Lawrence, Chicago Classical Review
CD: De Pasión Mortal - Songs from Two Golden Ages
Nicholas Mulroy, Elizabeth Kenny, Toby Carr - August 2024
Not just the music, but tenor Nicholas Mulroy’s glorious singing, the diction clear, the phrasing natural, the voice supple and multi-hued. Just listen to Purcell’s ‘By beauteous softness’, its affective languor contrasting with Mulroy’s crisp dramatisation of the composer’s ‘In the black dismal dungeon of despair’.
William Yeoman, Gramophone
Throughout the album Mulroy displays impeccable technique and a range of vocal colours, enhanced by his judicious choice of repertoire and musical partners.
Ingrid Pearson, BBC Music Magazine
Scattered Rhymes with the Dunedin Consort (Director)
Wigmore Hall, May 2024
His presence was always reassuring but he kept out of the way, offering what the singers needed and no more – support for an entry here, tempo guidance there – but with the lightest of touches, a brilliantly minimalist approach that others could learn from.
Bernard Hughes, The Arts Desk
The Academy of Ancient Music: Bach’s St Matthew Passion (Evangelist, Tenor 1)
Barbican, March 2024
Nicholas Mulroy, somehow finding time from singing Bach somewhere else in the world, was the incomparable Evangelist. His appealing tenor sound is a familiar asset, but so are his diction and keen sense of the meaning of the text. He was poignant in all the most expressive moments, often deploying a mezza-voce that still had presence. He had to hold his score, not to read for the Evangelist role, but with a finger in the page where he had to continue as the sole tenor in Chorus 1, often as soon as his solo ended.
Roy Westbrook, BachTrack
Acis (Acis and Galatea)
UK tour, June 2022
[A]longside the evident wit and mischief, this was a wonderfully buoyant, tender account, and one full of authentic emotion – from the unforced directness of Redmond’s silvery Galatea to Dunedin Associate Director Nicholas Mulroy’s vulnerable, thoughtful Acis.
David Kettle, The Scotsman *****
The Academy of Ancient Music: St John Passion
Barbican, London 9th April 2022
Each of the nine soloists formed part of the expert 12-voice choir, including Nicholas Mulroy’s lyrically-sung Evangelist
Richard Fairman, The Financial Times
Bach's St Matthew Passion with the Dunedin Consort
Edinburgh, St Mary's Cathedral 9th April and London, Wigmore Hall 12th April 2022
...the sheer expressivity of [Mulroy's] singing was a thing of wonder here. Every phrase, every word was turned over carefully so as to heighten the storytelling. I’ve rarely heard an Evangelist that’s so well acted.
Simon Thompson, The Times*****
Mulroy, probably now the leading Evangelist of his generation, was outstanding. Vocally he still has the pure and affecting sound of his 2007 recording with the Dunedin Consort. But the interpretation has matured, with a freely expressive fervour in his narration, his singing both rapt and rapturous. His reluctant solo bow was met with a prolonged roar.
Roy Westbrook, Backtrack ***
How Lonely Sits the City (directing)
Online concert, November 2020
A pertinent and thoughtful recital meditates on isolation... if you’re after something to stimulate and soothe, a concert so thoughtfully programmed and lovingly presented that it’s almost as good as being back in the hall, then the Dunedin Consort have the answer... Probably best known for their Bach – crisp, energised, glossy – the Dunedins find a different touch here in their first performance under their newly-named Associated Director Nicholas Mulroy. Edges are softer, creating a lovely hazy glow, and there’s an organic, exploratory quality to the shaping and pacing.
Alexandra Coghlan, The Arts Desk
It’s a cathartic experience, one that faces down our current challenges, and transcends them, too, in impeccable, gloriously expressive performances. Conductor Nicholas Mulroy – recently appointed as Dunedin’s Associate Director – seems to have a miraculous gift of conjuring highly distinctive, individual sound worlds for each of the concert’s contrasting pieces – beautifully luminous and supple for the Lassus Lamentations that frame the performance; warm and resonant for Rudolf Mauersberger’s Brahmsian Wie liegt die Stadt so wüste; fiery and chiselled for James MacMillan’s powerful Miserere.
David Kettle, The Scotsman *****
The Dunedin has never sounded better, and that is a high bar to reach...The Cruttwell-Reade commission will surely quickly find a place in the repertoire...The singers’ clarity of diction here, and indeed throughout, was faultless.
Keith Bruce, Vox Carnyx
Handel's Messiah with RSNO
Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, January 2020
The quartet of vocal soloists were each a joy to listen to. Tenor Nicholas Mulroy sang the opening recitative and aria with a light yet full tone
Miranda Heggie, Scottish Herald
Requiem Aeternam with the Dunedin Consort (directing)
November 2019
An exceptional evening of music directed by Nicholas Mulroy, deeply thoughtful, compassionate and nourishing…Mulroy is a respected tenor himself, and his direction was assured and expertly judged: at times he appeared to leave the singers to their own devices, while at others he goaded them with urgent gestures to ever greater expressivity
David Kettle, The Scotsman *****
Tenor-turned-conductor Nicholas Mulroy gave the thirteen-strong group an interestingly varied menu of “music of loss and consolation” to work with... the variety of tonal colour this group of singers blended to produce made an otherwise very full and often fascinating sound
Keith Bruce, The Herald ****
Nicholas Mulroy’s Opera Repertoire
| BERLIOZ | Les Troyens (Iopas, Hylas) |
|---|---|
| BRITTEN | Billy Budd (Novice) |
| DONIZETTI | Don Pasquale (Ernesto) |
| HANDEL | Theodora (Septimius) |
| MONTEVERDI | L’Orfeo (Orfeo, Pastore) |
| MOZART | Magic Flute (Tamino, Monostatos) |
| POULENC | Les Dialogues des Carmélites (Le Chevalier) |
| PROKOFIEV | Betrothal in a Monastery (Novice) |
| RAMEAU | Castor et Pollux (Castor) |
| ROSSINI | La Cenerentola (Ramiro) |
| WEIR | A Night at the Chinese Opera (Tenor Actor) |
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