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Biography

Penelope Turner is a versatile singer with a large range and an expressive voice capable of producing many different shades and colours. She sings as a soloist and in small ensembles, specializing in early, modern and contemporary music. Penelope made her debut as a composer in March 2020, when she began her Hildegard Revisited project to revisit all 77 liturgical chants by the 12th century abbess Hildegard von Bingen (see below for more details.)

Penelope is based in Brussels.

Highlights

  • From October 2024, artistic director of the new group Ensemble Caldemia, with concerts (The Living Light) in March and October 2025.
  • EP release in March 2025: Precious Hope, pieces from the Hildegard Revisited project under the Etcetera Records label.
  • From 2024: new duo formed with pianist Helen Crayford in 2024 for performing vintage cabaret (Kurt Weill and contemporaries).
  • May 2024: co-organised a mini Hildegard von Bingen festival in the Brussels Cathedral.
  • From 2023 onwards: vocal workshops to sing Hildegard von Bingen from the original notation.
  • From 2022 onwards: renewed collaboration with Jos Somsen (Ut Sol) to perform a “concert experience” combining Christian, Jewish and Islamic elements through the music Hildegard von Bingen, Yiddish songs, and Sufi instrumental music.
  • March 2020, start of Hildegard Revisited, a project focusing on the 77 liturgical chants of Hildegard of Bingen (12th century): interpreting the chants from the original notation and creating new compositions for all 77 chants.
  • CD release in December 2018 of Kurt and the Sophisticated Lady’s first CD: Weill Times, a black tango, available on homerecords.be.
  • From 2013: creation and performance with pianist Andrew Wise of four Kurt Weill programmes with Kurt and the Sophisticated Lady:
  • Collaboration with the medieval/contemporary vocal ensemble Mora Vocis (three – five female soloists) for Mater Dolorosa – Femmes au Tombeau (2016).
  • From 2016 – 2024: collaboration with the medieval/contemporary vocal ensemble La Noeva.
  • Collaboration with other renowned ensembles including:
    • Ensemble Oltremontano
    • Ensemble Dal Canzoniere
    • Currende
    • Ex tempore
  • Collaboration with composer Stevie Wishart:
    • York Early Music Festival with Hildegard Vespers and Sinfonye (2013).
    • Hildegard Von Bingen and Stevie Wishart in the ‘Inner Garden’, a FoAM production in the glasshouses of Ghent’s botanical gardens (2013).
    • UK PROM concert with the BBC Singers and Stevie Wishart’s group Sinfonye (2011).
    • Première of Stevie Wishart’s piece Europa at the Styriate Festival, Graz (2007).
  • Miscellaneous projects with pianist Andrew Wise including Classic meets Cabaret (2007).
  • Co-founder of two ensembles specializing in the music of the Ecole de Notre Dame (Léonin and Pérotin):
    • co-founder of four-voice ensemble Ut Sol (2002).
    • co-founder of three-voice female ensemble Trigon, 1998 winner of the International Young Artists’ Presentation (Festival of Flanders), Antwerp, Belgium.

Publications

Penelope Turner is a singer, cellist and composer based in Brussels. She specialises in early music, and in modern and contemporary music.

Penelope began her singing career as a choral scholar at Trinity College, Cambridge and completed her training with a specialization in early vocal ensemble music at the Brabants Conservatory in Tilburg. In 1998, she won first prize in the International Young Artists’ Presentation (Festival of Flandres, BE) as part of the three-voice medieval ensemble, Trigon. This ensemble specialized in the interpretation of Gregorian chant and early Notre Dame School polyphony.

Hildegard von Bingen

In March 2020, Penelope began an ambitious project to reinterpret and revisit all 77 of Hildegard von Bingen’s liturgical chants. In this project, each of Hildegard monodies is first recorded in an original interpretation based on the medieval notation. Penelope then gives the chant a modern, polyphonic setting that both incorporates the original chant in its entirety and enrobes it in a new sound world inspired by the particularities of the chant’s text and melody. The entire Hildegard Revisited project is available on SoundCloud, and see also here.

Since 2023, Penelope has been giving vocal workshops to help others discover and sing Hildegard von Bingen from the original notation.

As a singer, Penelope has collaborated with many early music ensembles, among others, Oltremontano, Sinfonye, Mora Vocis, Ordo Virtutum, Ex Tempore, Currende, the Laudantes Consort, La Noeva, and Dal Canzonière.

Penelope is also an experienced performer of modern and contemporary works. Since 2013, she has focused in particular on the music of Kurt Weill, giving many concerts across Europe with the pianists Andrew Wise and Helen Crayford.

Penelope has sung at numerous festivals of international renown such as: the Festivals of Wallonia and Flandres, the Utrecht and York Early Music Festivals, the Graz Styriate Festival, the Hannover Herrenhausen Kunstfestspiele, the French Festivals d’Ile de France, Radio France, Odyssud, Sinfonia en Périgord, and Septembre Musicale de l’Orne, and the Slovenian Brežice Festival. She has performed as a soloist at the Brussels BOZAR (Henri le Boeuf) concert hall and in numerous other venues in Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom.

Penelope has extensive recording experience, both for CD and live radio, in particular with Mora Vocis, Trigon (“Music for Candlemas”, released in 2000), Aquarius, and the Laudantes Consort. In 2018, she released the CD “Weill Times – a Black Tango” with the group Kurt and the Sophisticated Lady under the Homerecords label. In March 2025, she released the album “Precious Hope” featuring her own compositions from her Hildegard Revisited project under the Etcetera records label.

Between 2005 and 2015, Penelope was involved in many educational projects (for example, in partnership with the Réseau de Musiciens Intervenants en Ateliers (ReMuA), the BOZAR Education Department and the Orchestre Nationale de Belgique and Educ’Art).

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