Biography

John Mark Ainsley (Gonsalve) was born in Cheshire, England and began his music training in Oxford. Engagements this season include a recital at London’s Wigmore Hall, a tour of Messiah with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Britten’s War Requiem at the Teatro Real Madrid, Stravinsky’s Le Rossignol and Ravel’s L’heure espagnole under Charles Dutoit at the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, and an appearance at the Edinburgh International Festival. Mr. Ainsley’s many recordings include Handel’s Saul with John Eliot Gardiner, Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Colin Davis, Stravinsky’s Pulcinella with Bernard Haitink and Bach’s Mass in B minor and the Evangelist in Saint Matthew Passion with Seiji Ozawa for Philips Classics; Berlioz’s L’enfance du Christ and Requiem, Handel’s Alexander’s Feast and Acis and Galatea, and the title role in Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo for Decca; Britten’s orchestral song cycles, Charlie in Brigadoon, and Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni for EMI; and Handel’s La Resurezzione, Rameau’s Dardanus and Handel’s Messiah with Marc Minkowski, Britten’s Spring Symphony with John Eliot Gardiner, and Ravel’s L’heure espagnole with André Previn for Deutsche Grammophon. For Hyperion he has made a series of recital discs of Schubert, Mozart, Purcell, Grainger, Warlock, and Quilter; his recording of Vaughan Williams’s On Wenlock Edge with the Nash Ensemble was nominated for a Gramophone Award. John Mark Ainsley won the 2007 Royal Philharmonic Society Singer Award and is a visiting professor at the Royal Academy of Music. He made his San Francisco Symphony debut in 1999.

(June 2015)