Born and raised in Austin, Texas, Andrew Hallock first studied composition at the University of Texas, completing his bachelor’s degree in 2002. He worked for several years in church music before moving to Europe to study singing at the Royal Conservatory in the Hague. His teachers were Michael Chance, Peter Kooij, and Lenie van den Heuvel. He graduated in 2009.
Andrew regularly works with notable ensembles, including Musica Fiata Köln, English Voices, Cappella Pratensis, Residentie Bachensembles, Barokensemble de Swaen and has had Summer engagements with the Festival d’Aix en Provence and the Salzburger Festspiele. He has performed with conductors Ivor Bolton, Jos Vermunt, Peter Jan Leusink among others. This April he made his solo debut in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw with the St. Matthew Passion, stepping-in for countertenor Sytse Buwalda. He appears on the 2009 DVD of Handel’s Theodora on the C-Major label, and January 2012 will see a new CD release – the Requiem of Pierre de la Rue and Johannes Ockeghem with Cappella Pratensis on the Brilliant Classics label. He also maintains an active academic interest in historically-informed performance and period instrument construction. Andrew has attended workshops and seminars on a wide range of topics at Dartington, Amherst, Kloster Michaelstein, Academie Ambronay, and others in the UK, France, Belgium, and the US.
Having also studied instrument-making in the Netherlands with a master-craftsman, he builds a variety of cornetti. His goal is to develop the idea of the cornetto as a consort instrument, and produce and promote the lower members of that family. To this effect he organized a collective of instrument-makers, who produce copies of historical wind instruments, and also new instruments based on extrapolated evidence. Working collaboratively, they play an important part in each other’s research. They have equipped a work-space in the Hague in which to explore historical methodology – boring, gluing, and forging according to original techniques. This year he will exhibit his instruments at the Tage Alter Musik Regensburg, Festival Oudemuziek Utrecht, Vienna, and other European exhibitions.
