Stephen Stubbs

Adjunct Instructor

Lute, Baroque Performance Practices

sstubbs@cornish.edu

Born in Seattle, Stephen Stubbs studied composition, lute, and harpsichord at university and privately in Holland and England before making his professional debut as a lutenist at Wigmore Hall, London in 1976. From 1980 until 2006 Stubbs served as professor for lute and performance practices at the Hochschule für Künste, Bremen.

With his direction of Stefano Landi’s La Morte d’Orfeo at the 1987 Bruges festival, Stubbs launched his career as an opera director and simultaneously founded the ensemble Tragicomedia, which has since recorded numerous CDs and completed tours of Europe, North America and Japan. Stubbs has been invited to direct opera productions in Europe, the U.S., Canada, and Scandinavia. Most recently he directed Monteverdi’s Poppea in Vancouver, Mattheson’s Boris Goudenow in Boston, Gluck’s Orfeo in Bilbao, and Handel’s Giulio Cesare in Murcia. In 2006 Stubbs returned to his native Seattle to found and serve as Artistic Director of Pacific Operaworks, an opera company dedicated to staging new productions of seldom performed works from the Baroque and contemporary opera repertoire.

Since 1997 Stubbs has also co–directed the biennial Boston Early Music Festival opera. This has resulted in Grammy–nominated recordings of Conradi’s Ariadne in 2005 and of Lully’s Thesee in 2007. Stubbs’ solo lute recordings include the music of J.S. Bach, S.L. Weiss, David Kellner and the Belgian lutenist Jaques St. Luc, and with baroque harpist Maxine Eilander Sonate al Pizzico on the ATMA label. His performances can also be heard on the Vanguard Classics and ECM labels.