Harry van der Kamp

Harry van der Kamp (born 1947 in ) is a Dutch bass singer in opera and concert. Mostly active in Historically informed performance, he founded the Gesualdo Ensemble. He is also an academic voice teacher.

Born in Kampen, van der Kamp studied first law and psychology in Amsterdam. Then he studied singing with Elizabeth Cooymans and Max van Egmond at the Amsterdam Sweelinck Conservatory.

He has worked mainly in Early music and Baroque, including Baroque opera of composers such as Francesco Cavalli, Stefano Landi, Antonio Cesti, Henry Purcell, Jean-Philippe Rameau, Reinhard Keiser and George Frideric Handel. He sang with the Nederlandse Opera in Monteverdi's operas L'Orfeo and L'incoronazione di Poppea, and also in Rêves d'un Marco Polo of Claude Vivier. Bernard Holland described his appearance in 1996 as Zoroastro in Handel's Orlando with Les Arts Florissants, conducted by William Christie, in the New York Times: "Harry van der Kamp is the only man, managing Zoroastro's bass arias with pleasing clarity and heft."

He recorded several Bach cantatas and the Mass in B minor with Gustav Leonhardt. On a recording of Bach's St John Passion with Sigiswald Kuijken he appeared together with his teacher Max van Egmond and Christoph Prégardien as the Evangelist. In 1996 he recorded Bach's St Matthew Passion with Frans Brüggen and the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century in a live performance in the Vredenburg (castle), together with Nico van der Meel (Evangelist), Kristinn Sigmundsson (Jesus), María Cristina Kiehr, Ian Bostridge and Peter Kooy, among others. He performed regularly with the choir Junge Kantorei in Eberbach Abbey, in Monteverdi's Vespro della Beata Vergine in 1978, in Handel's Messiah in 1979, in Bach's St. Matthew Passion in 1981 and 1985, and in his Mass in B minor in 1983.