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.
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 ****
Handel: Chandos Te Deum & Chandos Anthem No 8
ONYX 4203, February 2019
The single voices combine harmoniously in contrapuntal choruses, and unaccompanied passages are shaded poignantly. Charles Daniels’s navigation of a stratospheric register interweaves deftly with Nicholas Mulroy’s soaring on the highest tenor parts... the relaxed sincerity of [Butterfield's] musicians yields revelatory new insights
David Vickers, Gramophone
The five vocal soloists are cohesive when singing together as a chorus and make distinctive contributions when taking the solo roles... Nicholas Mulroy projects a declamatory fervour, contrasting with Grace Davidson’s tender dialogue with an oboe and violins in ‘When though tookest upon thee’
Curtis Rogers, ClassicalSource ****
Adrian Butterfield has chosen a fine group of soloists...Charles Daniels and Nicholas Mulroy do not disappoint in the arias, and with the ensembles we never lose sight of individual voices either.
Planet Hugill, *****
Strozzi & Monteverdi with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
Kings Place, January 2019
Mulroy made a fine Poet in Volgendo il Ciel, presiding over its ceremonials with elegant nobility
Tim Ashley, The Guardian ****
Sung with vibrant tone... Nicholas Mulroy did wonders with the high tessitura of the upper tenor part. [In Volgendo il ciel] Nicholas Mulroy was heroic in the poet's rhetorical verses with the chorus providing a lovely vibrant conclusion.
Planet Hugill, 4.5*
St John Passion (Evangelist) with Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Minnesota
Cathedral of Saint Paul & Ordway Concert Hall, November 2018
Saturday evening's St. Paul Chamber Orchestra performance of the Passion was one of the most satisfying you could hope to hear...The soloists were headed by the English tenor Nicholas Mulroy in the huge part of the Evangelist who relates the Passion story. Mulroy was an outstandingly sensitive narrator. He sang without a score, greatly enhancing his eye contact with both the audience and the other characters and adding a riveting immediacy to the storytelling.
Terry Blain, Star Tribune
Tenor Nicholas Mulroy proved a charismatic Evangelist, not only singing the expansive role of the work’s narrator from memory, but making him an engaged spectator to the story, whether underlining a sense of helplessness at the unfolding conflict or seemingly refereeing the argument between Jesus and Pontius Pilate.
Rob Hubbard, TwinCities.com
Handel's Messiah with RSNO
Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, 2nd January 2018
Tenor Nicholas Mulroy is arguably currently the perfect man to trust with the work’s opening recitative and aria, [with] his story-telling, perfectly enunciated, performance.
Keith Bruce, Herald Scotland *****
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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