Dr Hazel Brooks

I am a professional violinist and academic researcher. I specialise in historically informed performance and my research is largely practice-led. I perform internationally as a recitalist and with HIP ensembles, and have released critically acclaimed recordings related to my research. My PhD (University of Leeds, 2023, sponsored by WRoCAH and the AHRC) investigated violin scordatura in seventeenth-century England.

My current research seeks to build on my doctoral work in the neglected field of early English violin playing. Current areas of focus include links between English violin and viol repertoire, and influences on the seventeenth-century English violin school from Italy and Central Europe. My methodology involves a mixture of traditional research (archival work with manuscripts and early records, musical analysis, and editing) and practical investigation through performance of the music. This approach leads to wider insights than traditional research alone, and concerts, lecture-recitals and recordings allow my findings to reach an audience beyond academia.

As a performer I have a longstanding duo-partnership with keyboard-player David Pollock (Duo Dorado, www.duodorado.co.uk). We have an ongoing project to perform and record early English violin music. To date, we have released premiere recordings of violin sonatas by William Croft (CRD 3529), Daniel Purcell (Chandos CHAN 0795), and Gottfried Finger (Chandos CHAN 0824, awarded five stars by BBC Music Magazine), with another (music by Nicola Matteis) forthcoming. My interest in medieval monody and language is explored in collaboration with soprano Faye Newton (Duo Trobairitz, www.trobairitz.co.uk) and presented in the recording The Language of Love (Hyperion CDA67634). I am also musical director of the City Bach Collective (www.citybachcollective.org.uk) and principal violinist of the ground-breaking ensemble Cappella Fede (dir. Peter Leech).

I am an associate fellow of the HEA and have taught on undergraduate modules in Theory and Harmony and Music in History and Culture at the University of Leeds. I have also led practical performance workshops, masterclasses, and coaching sessions at various conservatoires, universities, and other institutions.

Before coming to Leeds, I was an honorary fellow at the University of Southampton for four years. I studied at Clare College, Cambridge; the Hochschule für Musik und Theater, Leipzig; and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London; and pursued a busy freelance performing career in Europe and USA.