Silas Wollston

Among the most versatile musicians on the English early music scene, Silas Wollston has been active as a harpsichord and organ soloist, a continuo player, and a choral conductor. He is also noted as an educator, composer and arranger, and musicological researcher. Wollston was born Silas Standage, and his father was Baroque violinist Simon Standage. Partly to avoid confusion with his father, he changed his surname to Wollston for his research work in 2005 and for performance as well in 2010. Wollston attended Cambridge University, studying musicology and serving as an organ scholar (a student who performs at services in exchange for reduced tuition) at Cambridge's Trinity College. He stayed on at Cambridge for a master's degree, studying with Robin Holloway, and then turned to keyboard studies, both on harpsichord and on early pianos, at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London and at the Conservatoire Royale in Brussels. From 2000 to 2010, Wollston served as the principal keyboard continuo player and assistant conductor to John Eliot Gardiner and his various early music ensembles. Wollston has continued to perform on harpsichord and organ, often programming music of later composers influenced by the Baroque, such as Brahms' transcriptions of Frescobaldi. He continues to perform as a continuo player, as a member of In Echo and The Bach Players, and as a guest with such groups as the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the Taverner Consort, and the Academy of Ancient Music. In the 2010s, however, he turned his attention to choral music, leading the Queens' College Choir from 2011 to 2015 and making two recordings with the group for the Orchid Classics label. From 2017 to 2020, Wollston served as the music director of the Residentiary Choir of the Royal School of Church Music. Throughout this period, he has taught both instrumental music and academic courses at Cambridge and elsewhere. Wollston has continued to record, backing La Nuova Musica on organ on a recording of François Couperin's Leçons de Ténèbres in 2016. He made two recordings with Fretwork and His Majesty's Sagbutts and Cornetts of English Pre-Restoration verse anthems, and he has played continuo on a pair of albums with countertenor Iestyn Davies, If (2019) and Lamento (2021). ~ James Manheim, Rovi