Originally, Dame Emma Kirkby had no expectations of becoming a professional singer. As a classics student at Oxford University and then a schoolteacher she sang for pleasure in choirs and small groups, always feeling most at home in Renaissance and Baroque repertoire. She joined the Taverner Choir in 1971 and in 1973 began her long association with the Consort of Musicke. Kirkby took part in the early Decca Florilegium recordings with both the Consort of Musicke and the Academy of Ancient Music (AAM) at a time when most college-trained sopranos were not seeking a sound appropriate for early instruments. She therefore had to find her own approach, with enormous help from Jessica Cash in London, and from the directors, fellow singers and instrumentalists with whom she has worked over the years.

To date, she has made well over a hundred recordings of all kinds, from sequences of Hildegarde of Bingen to madrigals of the Italian and English Renaissance, Baroque cantatas and oratorios, and works by Mozart, Haydn and JC Bach. In addition to many recordings with the AAM and Consort of Musicke, she also performs and records with London Baroque and the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra. With the Royal Academy Baroque Orchestra, she was soloist in the first recording of the recently discovered ‘Gloria’ by Handel. Her disc, Chanson d’amour, of music by the American composer, Amy Beach (1867–1944), took Kirkby into the realm of twentieth-century music, but her favourite territory is still amongst the Baroque and Classical composers.

More recently she has recorded cantatas by Cataldo Amodei, with Jakob Lindberg and Lars Ulrik Mortensen (BIS 2004); William Byrd Consort Songs, with the viol consort Fretwork (Harmonia Mundi USA 2005); Scarlatti Stabat Mater, with Daniel Taylor (ATMA 2006); and Honey from the Hive — songs of John Dowland, with Anthony Rooley (BIS 2006).

In 1999 Kirkby was voted ‘Artist of the Year’ by Classic FM radio listeners and, in 2000, she was awarded an OBE. Despite all the recording activity, Emma still prefers live concerts, especially the pleasure of repeating programmes with colleagues; every occasion, every venue and every audience will combine to create something new from this wonderful repertoire.