The Early Music Legend

Legendary countertenor gives last London recital Martin Cullingford 4:32pm GMT 23rd May 2011 On Saturday the countertenor James Bowman took his leave of the London stage for the final time, with a Wigmore Hall recital that drew to a close more than four decades of performance. Bowman had said he didn’t want it to be an emotional occasion, and such was his self-deprecating chat between performances (a masterclass in endearing stage informality) that the tone was one of levity rather than a dwelling on the passing of an era. But what an era closed with his final bow. Bowman first graced the Wigmore stage in 1967, as part of an audition with David Munrow’s Early Music Consort for the influential agent Emmie Tillett. In subsequent years Munrow went on to transform perceptions of early music, while Bowman would go on to pick up Alfred Deller’s mantle and elevate a voice type only really then preserved in the English choral tradition, into a central part of the vocal music world. In d...