Catherine Bott

Catherine Bott (September 11, 1952) is an English soprano and a baroque specialist.

Following her studies at the The King's High School For Girls, and Guildhall School of Music and Drama, with Arthur Reckless, she began her career as a member of the English baroque-jazz crossover group, the Swingles. By 1980 she had begun appearing frequently in the New London Consort and thereafter began performing across the world in Europe, Latin America and the USSR with several other period-instrument groups.

She has recorded extensively, as Dido in Purcell's Dido and Aeneas (with Christopher Hogwood and the Academy of Ancient Music in 1994), with King's College, Cambridge Choir conducted by Stephen Cleobury in Bach's St. John Passion, as Venus in Blow’s Venus and Adonis with Philip Pickett and Monteverdi's L'Incoronazione di Poppea with Sir John Eliot Gardiner. She also vocalized on Trevor Jones's score for The Dark Crystal.

Recently, and perhaps unexpectedly, Bott has been called in by conductors to perform and record much more recent repertoire, for example with Sir John Eliot Gardiner in Fauré's Requiem, Vaughan Williams' Sinfonia Antartica and Nielsen’s Third Symphony with Bryden Thomson and the London Symphony Orchestra and Royal Scottish National Orchestra respectively. Likewise, she is much in demand among contemporary composers such as Michael Nyman and Jonathan Dove.

She is one of three presenters of The Early Music Show on BBC Radio 3 (with Andrew Manze and Lucie Skeaping) on Saturdays and Sundays 13:00 - 14:00.