Dr Emily Worthington
Lecturer in Music (Historical Performance)

Profile

Biography

Emily Worthington joined the University of York in 2022 as Lecturer in Music (Historical Performance).

Emily is in much demand as a professional clarinettist specialising in period instruments from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. She is regularly invited to perform as a guest principal with leading ensembles around the world, including the Academy of Ancient Music, Gabrieli Consort and Players, Concerto Copenhagen, Le Cercle de l’Harmonie, the Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra and Spira Mirabilis. Emily also leads Boxwood & Brass, a Harmonie specialising in performing Classical and Early-Romantic wind repertoire on period instruments. Boxwood & Brass's recordings for Resonus Classics have been called 'dazzlingly persuasive' (BBC Music Magazine), 'button-bright' (Gramophone), 'revelatory' (Early Music Today) and 'joyous listening' (The Artsdesk).

Emily previously held the post of Senior Lecturer in Music Performance at the University of Huddersfield, where she co-directed the Research Centre for Performance Practices (ReCePP). In addition to her freelance performing career, Emily worked as an adult education lecturer at Morely College in London; as a clarinet and woodwind teacher for St Benedict's School Ealing and the Gipsy Hill Federation; and a Curatorial Assistant at in the Royal College of Music's Centre for Performance History. 

Emily is regularly invited to coach on orchestral and chamber music programmes, including the Jeune Orchestre de l’Abbaye in France and Chetham's School of Music. She was an invited coach on the 'Transforming C19th Historically-Informed Performance' chamber music course at the University of Oxford in 2017 and in 2018 convened the 19th Century Salon workshop at Huddersfield, bringing together professional and postgraduate musicians from around the world to explore aspects of C19th performance style. Along with her colleagues from Boxwood & Brass, Emily has run an annual wind music weekend course for adults at Benslow Music since 2016.

Emily’s postgraduate performance training took place at the Royal College of Music and through the Formation Superieure de l’Abbaye aux Dames de Saintes, where she specialised in orchestral and chamber music performance of Classical and Romantic repertoire on period instruments.  Emily's doctorate at the University of York was supported by an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award, she investigated the impact of the emergent recording and broadcasting industries on woodwind playing in early twentieth-century London orchestras. An Edison Visiting Fellowship at the British Library in 2014 enabled her to conduct a large-scale survey of early wind chamber music recordings.

Research

Overview

Emily's main research interests concern:

• The practice and culture of performance in Western Classical Music 1750-1950
• Historically Informed Performance in repertoire 1750-1950
• Wind music performance and repertoire
• Theory and methodology of embodied knowledge and practice-research in Historically Informed Performance.
• History of sound recording and broadcasting (particularly the early BBC)

Teaching

Undergraduate

• Playing with the Past: sources and methods in Historically-Informed Performance
• Romantic Performance Practice

Postgraduate

• Historical Performance Practices (Baroque, Classical and Romantic)

Other teaching

• 2018-2022 External Examiner, MMus Music Performance, University of Sheffield
• 2020-2024 External Examiner, MMus Music Performance and Related Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London