Nicholas Isherwood

Nicholas Isherwood is US-born bass singer, who specialises in contemporary and baroque music. Notable roles include "Lucifer" in the world premieres of Stockhausen’s Montag, Dienstag, and Freitag from Licht at La Scala and the Leipzig Opera, and in Donnerstag aus Licht at Covent Garden.

Isherwood has worked with Joel Cohen, William Christie, Peter Eötvös, Paul McCreesh, Nicholas McGegan, Kent Nagano, Zubin Mehta and Gennadi Rozhdestvensky as well as composers Sylvano Bussotti, Elliott Carter, George Crumb, Hans Werner Henze, Mauricio Kagel, György Kurtág, Olivier Messiaen, Giacinto Scelsi, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Iannis Xenakis in venues such as La Scala, Covent Garden, the Théatre des Champs Elysées, Salzburg Festival, Concertgebouw, Berlin Staatsoper, Vienna Konzerthaus, Tanglewood).

His operatic roles include: "Antinoo" in Monteverdi’s Il Ritorno di Ulisse in Patria with Boston Baroque; "Claudio" in Händel’s Agrippina with Nicholas McGegan; "Satiro" in Rossi’s Orfeo and "Pan" in Marais’ Alcione with Les Arts Florissants; "Joas" in Porpora's Il Gedeone with Martin Haselböck; "Frère Léon" in Saint François d’Assise in the last composer supervised production; "Der Tod" in the two productions of Ullmann’s Der Kaiser von Atlantis with the Internationale Bachakademie Stuttgart and 2e2m, "Roméo" in Dusapin’s Roméo et Juliette at the Avignon Festival; "Lear" in Hosokawa’s Vision of Lear for the Munich Biennale; "Il Testimone" in Bussotti’s Tieste at the Rome Opera, and "Micromégas" Mefano's Micromégas. Recent performances include works by Sylvano Bussotti at the Stockholm New Music Festival in 2008.

In addition to singing, Isherwood has had an extremely active pedagogical career. He has been engaged as professor (or assistant professor) of vocal music and/or music theater (opera) at institutions in France, Germany, and the United States, including the IRCAM Summer Academy, Stockhausen-Kurse (Kürten, Germany), State University of New York, Conservatoire de Montbéliard, University of Notre Dame, Ecole Normale de Musique (Paris), California Institute of the Arts, and the University of Oregon (starting in Fall, 2008). In 2015, he was recruited by Le Conservatoire national supérieur musique et danse de Lyon as voice professor.

He has presented masterclasses, workshops, and lectures at the Salzburg Mozarteum; Iannis Xenakis Summer Courses (Paris); Conservatoire de Reims; Paris Conservatoire (CNSMP), California State University, Los Angeles; Stanford University; University of California, Santa Barbara; University of Washington; San Francisco State University; California Institute of the Arts; ARIAM (Paris); Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi (Milano); Institute of the Living Voice (Berlin); Troyes Conservatoire; Mexico City University; Normal University of Taiwan; and at CCMIX (Paris).

Among his publications, The Techniques of Singing describes the techniques needed to perform contemporary vocal music.