Duo Oriana

Soprano Sinéad White and lutenist Jonathan Stuchbery are a Toronto-based duo breathing life into song traditions that span centuries and evolve in the present day. Both are specialists in the performance of renaissance and baroque music and first started working together in the early music scene in Toronto. The desire to keep making music during the most restricted days of the COVID-19 pandemic brought them together as a duo for the first time to collaborate virtually for a recording and video of an old Irish lullaby. This led them to assemble a program of music from Ireland, Scotland, and England, which reflected their own respective heritages. A film version of this concert is available online presented by Humbercrest United Church as part of their 2021 summer concert series. They are 2022-23 Artists in Residence at St. James Cathedral in downtown Toronto, where they will be presenting concerts, workshops, and integrating their music into cathedral worship.  

White and Stuchbery both have extensive experience in the discipline of historical performance. White is currently a DMA student at the University of Toronto, and Stuchbery is a recent graduate of the Masters in Interpretation of Early Music at ESMUC in Barcelona. Their formation in this field grounds them in performance practice, yet also inspires them to creativity with new arrangements and compositions. The duo is also actively working on expanding the repertoire for lute and voice, through research of little-known historical sources and in the composition of new music. They can also be heard together in larger ensemble contexts, such as with the indie early music company Aureas Voces, Tafelmusik, or Theatre of Early Music.