Listings

James Eisner was born in Sheffield but grew up in America and Scotland. He sang with the St Andrews University Madrigal and Renaissance Groups and was a regular performer at St Andrews Folk Club. In the early 80s he joined harmony group English Tapestry. Later he founded the Silkworm Early Music Series in Cambridge and the Silkworm Guitar Network nationally. He studied guitar with William J Hunt and Lorraine Eastwood, and has taken masterclasses with Nicola Hall, David Russell, Manus Noble and Edoardo Catemario, among others. He has studied voice with Nigel Wickens, Jeffrey Talbot, Felicity Cook, Jenny Miller, Penelope Randall-Davis, Ian Partridge, Michael Deason-Barrow and Ashley Stafford, and lute with Anna Langley, and has sung with groups such as Trecento, Otto Voci, The Cavalli Choir, The New Cambridge Singers, The Cambridge Taverner Choir, The Platinum Consort and Corde, and as soloist for Choir 2000, Queens College choir, Cantilena and Cambridge Voices among others. In 1998 he recorded a solo album of songs for tenor, lute and guitar, Songs through the Centuries. He started the Seiber Consort in 2007, to help promote the vocal works of the unjustly neglected 20C composer Mátyás Seiber. He currently teaches guitar and voice in Cambridge, and is interested in the parallels between vocal and guitar techniques.