Edward Wickham is a Fellow and Director of Music at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge. He combines his duties in Cambridge with performing engagements throughout the world, principally with The Clerks, the vocal ensemble which he formed in 1992. He came to St Catharine’s College in 2003, and in 2008 established the first college-based children’s girls’ choir. With The Clerks, he has made a series of ground-breaking recordings, principally of Franco-Flemish Renaissance music. In 2001 the ensemble completed an award-winning survey of the music of Jean Ockeghem and more recent projects have included first-time recordings of polyphony by composers such as Josquin, Barbireau and Regis.

In recent years, Dr Wickham has been exploring, through collaborative and experimental projects, modes of performance which break out of the traditional Western classical tradition.  With multi-media sound installations, partnerships with singers from the Middle East, and ground-breaking educational and outreach programmes, he is committed to pursuing an idiosyncratic agenda of artistic innovation and social participation.

His most recent projects, funded by Arts Awards from The Wellcome Trust, explore issues of cognition and intelligibility in musical lyrics and libretti.