Ellen Hargis is one of America’s premier early music singers, specialising in repertoire ranging from ballads to opera and oratorio. She has performed with many of the foremost period music conductors of the world including Andrew Parrott, Gustav Leonhardt, Paul Goodwin, Monica Huggett, Jane Glover, Simon Preston, Daniel Harding, Paul Hillier, Harry Bickett, Craig Smith and Jeffrey Thomas.
She has performed with the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Virginia Symphony, Washington Choral Arts Society, Long Beach Opera, CBC Radio Orchestra, Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Teatro Lirico, Tragicommedia, New York Collegium, The Mozartean Players, Fretwork, Emmanuel Music and the Mark Morris Dance Group, and has been regular performer with Chicago’s Music of the Baroque, the American Bach Soloists, Seattle Baroque and the Portland Baroque Orchestra. She has appeared at many of the world’s leading festivals including the Adelaide Festival (Australia), Utrecht Festival (Holland), Resonanzen Festival (Vienna), and Festival Vancouver, Tanglewood, the Berkeley Festival and New Music America Festival. She has been featured in successive seasons of the Boston Early Music Festival where she has sung Aeglé in Lully’s Thésée, the title role in Luigi Rossi’s L’Orfeo, Queen Pasiphae in Conradi’s Ariadne and Irina in Johann Mattheson’s 1710 opera, Boris Goudenow. Lully’s Thésée and Conradi’s Ariadne were recorded for CPO and were nominated respectively for 2007 and 2006 Grammys.
Recent engagements include a performance and recording of Música Celestial, music from a 17th c. Mexico City convent, which Ms. Hargis researched and directed as well as sang in with the Newberry Consort. On tour with The Newberry Consort, she performed the Cantigas de Santa Maria in New York, Boston, Milwaukee and Pittsburgh. She returned to The Chicago Chorale to sing Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, and performed Monteverdi’s Vespers under the direction of Paul O’Dette.
Ms. Hargis is also a stage director, and worked for three seasons with the Haymarket Opera Company in Chicago, where she directed Charpentier’s La Descente d’Orphée aux Enfers, and Actéon, Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, and two chamber operas by Handel. As Assistant Director at the 2015 Boston Early Music Festival, she oversaw the revival of Gilbert Blin’s 2009 production of Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea.
Ellen Hargis has a longstanding musical partnership with the great lutenist Paul O’Dette with whom she records and tours regularly. They have performed together throughout the United States, Canada, Austria, France Spain, Russia and Asia. Two recordings on the Noyse Productions label: The Power Of Love and A Christmas Album, have been met with critical acclaim. She is also featured on a dozen Harmonia Mundi recordings including a widely-acclaimed solo recital disc of music by Jacopo Peri, and in Arvo Pärt’s Berlin Mass with Theatre of Voices. She appears on a recording of Handel solo cantatas with the Seattle Baroque Orchestra on Wild Boar, the premiere recording of the Bonporti motets for soprano on Dorian, and several recordings for BMG Classics, Vanguard Classics, Virgin Classics, Erato, Dorian Classics and Berlin Classics. Her recording of Tristan et Iseult with The Boston Camerata was winner of the Grand Prix du Disque.
Ellen Hargis is a visiting professor at the Eastman School of Music, and will teach residencies at the Oberlin Conservatory, The Julliard School, and the University of Wisconsin during the 2015-2016 academic year. She is an Artist-in-Residence with the Newberry Consort at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University and directs at Early Music Vancouver’s annual Vancouver Baroque Vocal Programme.