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.
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.
Recent highlights include singing the Evangelist in Bach’s St Matthew Passion at Deutsche Oper Berlin and also with the Residentie Orkest in the Netherlands, Handel's Jephta with the Internationale Bachakademie Stuttgart, the role of Tempo Il trionfo del tempo e del disinganno in a new production at the Royal Danish Opera, a role also sung with Les Passions de l'Ame in Switzerland, the UK premiere of George Walker’s Lilacs with the BBC Philharmonic under John Storgårds, the Evangelist in a staged production of Bach’s St John Passion at Teatro Arriaga in Spain, and the same role in his debut at Théâtre du Châtelet, a new work by Stuart MacRae at the Lammermuir Festival, returns to the Freiburger Barockorchester to sing the role of Florestan in Beethoven’s Leonore and also Caldara's Maddalena ai piedi di Cristo, Britten’s Serenade with the Royal Northern Sinfonia, Handel’s Judas Maccabaeus for the second time with Capella Cracoviensis, Handel’s Messiah with the New York Philharmonic, and Bach’s Weihnachtoratorium with Casa da Musica.
This season, he sings Damon Acis and Galatea at WDR Köln, Handel's Samson with the Internationale Bachakademie Stuttgart, Bach’s Christmas Oratorio with Les Passions de l’Âme in Switzerland, and the St Matthew Passion at the Royal Festival Hall and also with Residentie Orkest and Richard Egarr.
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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
Winter into Spring, recital with Anna Tilbrook, The Oxford Lieder Festival
(February 2021)
… his recital, with Anna Tilbrook at the piano, paid quiet homage to the partnership of Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears, a Schubert group preceded by Britten’s Winter Words. His lean, very English-sounding tenor is an ideal instrument for Britten’s songs, and he clearly has a keen narrative gift…
Hugh Canning, The Times
First tenor Joshua Ellicott and pianist Anna Tilbrook wrung us with Britten’s Winter Words — a cycle of Hardy settings bookended by some of the composer’s bleakest vignettes — characters caught in a cycle of missed connections, isolation, exclusion. Ellicott whittles his voice down to a Pearsian point for these sketched miniatures, his line so spare that even the slightest softening — the melisma that halos the seraphim in ‘The Choirmaster’s Burial’, the floated opening to ‘A Time there Was’ — tells keenly.
Alexandra Coghlan, The Spectator
Lammermuir Festival recital with Anna Tilbrook
(September 2020)
Tenor Joshua Ellicott, joined by pianist Anna Tilbrook, gave a glorious nature-themed recital the following day, beginning with three tender, thoughtful Schubert songs before blossoming into the more troubled romance of Schumann’s Op. 39 Liederkreis, which also allowed Ellicott’s lyric tenor to bloom into rich, radiant colours. They continued with five Vaughan Williams songs that rather magically matched visionary mysticism with a sturdy gruffness, and were all the more powerful as a result.
David Kettle, The Scotsman
The little church of Holy Trinity, Haddington is hosting nearly all of this year’s concerts. It is a snug venue with a lovely acoustic, and the engineers have done a first rate job of capturing it. Joshua Ellicott’s golden-voiced tenor sounded wonderful in it, partnered by the sensitive, responsive pianism of Anna Tilbrook for his song recital. His opening set of Schubert nature songs oozed gemütlichkeit, with a sound as warm as the autumn sun; and he then gave a haunting performance of Schumann’s Opus 39 Liederkreis, which married the poems’ energy with the beauty of the music, bewitchingly so in ‘Mondnacht’. There was more nature-painting in his Vaughan Williams selection, with a delightful Linden Lea, followed by three of the Songs of Travel, where Tilbrook’s piano line drew my ear as much as Ellicott’s voice, and a radiant Silent Noon, before two Quilter songs ended a beautifully conceived recital.
Simon Thompson, Seen and Heard International
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