About
Emily is a musician, best known for her expressive singing of early music. She also sings newly-composed songs, traditional folk music, and whatever takes her fancy.
‘an uncommonly versatile singer… a luminous, clear, natural voice in which classical production is barely perceptible. She combines intelligence and sensuousness… at once tender and thrillingly beautiful. This was put to powerful effect’ – Basler Zeitung, Elizabethan lute songs and French airs de cour
She features on ground-breaking and award-winning discs of works by Monteverdi, Bach and Handel with the Taverner Consort, 16th & 17th-c. English, Italian and Spanish song with The Musicians of Swanne Alley, Circa 1500 and Tragicomedia, in music by Hildegard of Bingen and Machaut with Gothic Voices, and co-devised and directed My Lady Rich, her teares and joy, a portrait of Elizabethan gentlewoman Penelope Rich welcomed as 'a vivid and touching portrait' (The New York Times), 'riveting... heart-stealing' (BBC Music Magazine), 'a magnificent recording' (Goldberg).
Emily sang the role of Dido for the BBC-commissioned commemorative recording of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas (Taverner Players, Avie), songs by Vladimír Godár and Benjamin Britten on So sweet a melody, and church music for soprano and orchestra by Ján Levoslav Bella in a live concert recording with Solamente naturali.
‘This fresh performance… places the accent on giving colour and meaning to every word… a performance that charms as well as moves in abundance… Given a simple choice [amongst all recordings]… I’d walk away with this one.’ — BBC Music Magazine
Her enjoyment of exploring and conveying meaning is reflected in a Gramophone survey of 30 Hildegard of Bingen recordings: 'the sheer power of the words comes across nowhere else as strongly as in Van Evera's performance’.
Concerts have taken Emily to North America, Japan, London’s Wigmore Hall and Royal Albert Hall, and Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw. She has been a soloist at the BBC Proms on occasions including a broadcast recital of songs by Charles Ives, and Haydn's Creation Mass.
Emily took part in a specially devised chamber concert for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Rubens exhibition with New York Collegium, and also created a programme for The Forbidden Gaze exhibition at Compton Verney of French and English music on the myth of Diana and Acteon with London Baroque.
Other highlights include recitals of Francesca Caccini and Barbara Strozzi in Florence, London, and Edinburgh, a programme of early Tudor song for The Neill Concert at All Souls, Oxford, international broadcasts of dramatic works by Rameau and Alessandro Scarlatti, Messiah, Bach’s St Matthew Passion, and Schubert songs with 19th-century guitarist Martin Krajčo.
Stage and television appearances include operatic works by Monteverdi, Purcell, Handel, Charpentier, and Lully, a dramatised concert of early Tudor solo song for BBC television (A Concert for Mary Rose with Circa 1500), and a Prix d'Italia-winning film of the 1589 Intermedii.
Raised in northern Minnesota, Emily learned piano, flute, guitar, and period wind instruments in her youth, at Putney School, Vassar, and Wesleyan, alongside her more informal, core enjoyment of singing. An affinity for early vocal repertoires led her to England. She lives, gardens, and cooks near Oxford.