Giles Underwood has been Director of Music at University College, Oxford since 2013. He has a varied career as a bass-baritone, voice teacher, vocal coach and conductor.
Giles began his musical training as a chorister at Westminster Abbey and went on to study Biology at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was also an Academical Clerk. He then worked professionally as a singer, before enrolling onto first the postgraduate and then opera course at The Guildhall School of Music and Drama, studying under Professor Susan McCulloch.
He took up the post of Professor of Singing at The Royal Academy of Music in 2016, where he teaches individuals at all levels and runs a course in English Song for postgraduate singers. Before that he taught at The Guildhall School of Music and Drama for a number of years.
His opera students have gone on to young artist programmes in Helsinki, Vienna, Zurich and Florence, as well as the Opéra du Rhin and the National Opera Studio. Many of his former students have successful careers across different genres. He runs a thriving teaching practice in Oxford with students from a variety of colleges, including Magdalen, Merton, Christ Church and Queens. He taught in Cambridge from 2004-13 with students predominantly from Selwyn College.
He has led workshops and education projects for The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, The London Symphony Chorus, Cor de Cambra of Barcelona, the Granada Festival and Chorworks in Washington DC. He has had residencies at The College of New Jersey, Duke University, Princeton and The College-Conservatory of Music, Cincinnati in the US. He has been a teacher on Rodolfus Choral Courses every year since 1995 and has taught for the National Youth Choirs of Great Britain.
Giles has sung with many of the UK’s leading vocal ensembles, including I Fagiolini, Magnificat, Contrapunctus and Gallicantus. His nine-year membership of I Fagiolini taught him about consort singing, from staged productions of Monteverdi madrigals to more unusual contemporary repertoire. His solo work has taken him around the world, and he has sung roles in operas by Britten, Mozart and Puccini, as well as by James MacMillan, Edward Dudley Hughes, Cavalli, Paisiello, Salieri and Martinu.
In 2014 he founded the instrumental group, The Martlet Ensemble at Univ. This was followed in 2017 by the solo voice ensemble Martlet Voices. Both these outfits have the primary purpose to offer student musicians the opportunity to play and sing alongside professionals. This collaboration has led to the groups performing over more than two dozen different themed programmes, singing music from Cornysh and Monteverdi to newly commissioned works, and playing some of the great chamber music from Brahms and Schubert to Finzi, Wagner, Debussy and Mozart.
