Nancy Knowles
soprano, poet, visual artistSinging
Aside from the beauty of her voice, audiences and critics comment most about Nancy Knowles’ grace and presence on stage.  Listening to her sing, it comes as no surprise that she’s a poet and natural linguist, given her obvious passion for the words, both their meaning and the emotional colors conveyed by their sound.  Nancy began performing as a teenager, acting and singing in Shakespeare plays, which set the stage for her many years of performing medieval and renaissance music with her early music ensemble LiveOak (originally Trio LiveOak with the late John Fleagle and Frank Wallace, and later LiveOak and Company).  Since the mid 90s, Knowles has focused her energies on Duo LiveOak with guitarist/baritone/composer Frank Wallace. With an incomparable accompanist on classical and romantic guitar, lute and vihuela, Knowles has been able to indulge her passion for solo repertoire ranging from contemporary to Schubert to Broadway to Renaissance and medieval, while still enjoying ensemble singing in duet.  [For a more detailed history, see LiveOak]

In the late sixties, after attending Wheaton College, Knowles spent two and a half years as a photographer in Peru (in the Peace Corps) and Mexico. On returning from Latin America, she began full-time music studies in the Boston area with Marleen Frosberg Montgomery.  Over the years she has studied voice with Marcy Lindheimer, Carl Stough, Dagmar Apel and Roland Seiler.

Both with Duo LiveOak and with LiveOak and Company, Knowles has toured widely throughout the U.S. and Europe for 25 years, performing at festivals such as the Holland Festival/Utrecht, the Regensburg Festival, Musica en Compostela, the Boston Early Music Festival, and the Guitar Foundation of America Festival. Knowles has made six duo, trio, and quartet recordings (Titanic Records, Musical Heritage Society and Centaur Records). Her singing is featured on Duo LiveOak‘s recording, Schubert and Mertz (Gyre 10022), released July 2001.  Three new duo CDs are scheduled for release on the new Gyre label in the fall of  2001:   one of renaissance songs called Piva and one of 19th century theatrical songs called Pastiche.  Knowles is also working on her debut solo CD of Shaker and medieval songs with readings of her own poetry.

Poetry/Drama
Knowles has always brought drama and the spoken word into her performances and into her teaching of voice. In 1977 performance in Boston’s Jordan Hall, she performed a dramatic rendering of Juan Ramón Jimenez’ Platero y Yo, with Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s setting for classical guitar played by Frank Wallace.  In the 1980’s and ‘90’s, as artistic director of LiveOak and Company, she conceived a number of highly-acclaimed shows, including fully staged dramatic works. A shepherds play inspired by commedia dell’arte, The Lost Spindle toured extensively in the U.S. and Europe for several years “The Lost Spindle reflected humor in sorrow and vice-versa, reaching to the essence of the music performed and the message it contained. . . you laughed, you cried, then you laughed some more.” – The Tech (MIT), Singing Simpkin and Simon the King, a tavern drama with music of the 17th century commissioned by the Boston Early Music Festival, ran for five nights at the 1995 Festival: ‘. . . the show’s low slapstick and high hilarity had us rolling in the aisles . . .who would not be charmed?”  – The Boston Globe. Lanterns of Fire: Love and the Mystic in 16th Century Spain, paired 16th century Spanish partsongs with Knowles’ readings of the poetry of the great mystic St. John of the Cross, some of the greatest love poetry of all times. In 1999 Knowles produced and directed Honoring the Ancestors, a community production featuring early American music and readings, which  included the debut of An Untimely Frost, a choral song cycle by Bruce Randall based on texts gleaned from headstones in an old Antrim NH cemetery.

Knowles has been writing poetry for almost thirty years. It is her firm conviction that poetry should be spoken and performed, not just read. To that end, she runs workshops in performing poetry. Apart from the drama and poetry she brings to LiveOak performances, Knowles occasionally performs solo concerts glorying in the (mostly unaccompanied) human voice both in song and in verse, often celebrating women in all their roles.  Her Shaker songs sing of Mother Ann, her medieval songs, by such greats as Hildegard, often sing of Mary.  Knowles’ poetry travels from a sister’s mourning to the joys and struggles of motherhood, to the passions of a singing artist.  In the fall of 2001, Duo LiveOak will debut two song cycles by Frank Wallace that include Knowles’ poetry: Pearly Everlasting for soprano, baritone and lute (2001) and A Single Veil for soprano and classical guitar (2001).

Visual Arts
Having grown up in an artistic family (her mother is a painter, her brother a sculptor/painter), Knowles’ life in the arts began with visual art, particularly photography, which she continues as a hobby.  She became a photographer as a young Peace Corps volunteer in Peru (1967-69). For a number of years, she was also a weaver of fanciful landscape tapestries, spinning wool (from her own sheep) which she dyed with local plants.  Knowles paints occasionally, but the principal outlet for her visual skills has been in support of her performing: making masks, designing sets and costumes, and doing design work for all of LiveOak’s many enterprises over the years.

Nancy Knowles and her husband, guitarist/composer Frank Wallace, live with their two sons in a 1789 farmhouse in the historic Monadnock region of New Hampshire.