Lucie Skeaping (née Finch) is a British singer, instrumentalist, broadcaster and writer, founder of the early music group the City Waites (www.citywaites.co.uk), pioneering klezmer band The Burning Bush (www.theburningbush.co.uk), and presenter of BBC Radio 3's Early Music Show, a twice-weekly programme dedicated to the early music repertoire.
Born in London, the daughter of GP Dr Bernard Finch and the sculptor Patricia Finch, Skeaping studied at the Henrietta Barnet School and King Alfred School before she began her training at the Royal College of Music, as a violinist (with Sylvia Rosenberg) and singer (with Helga Mott), later studying the lute (with Diana Poulton) and the viol. After graduation she formed The City Waites, a four-piece group specialising in the broadside ballads of 17th-century England.
During the 1980s, Skeaping also worked as a children's television presenter for programmes including Play School, The Music Arcade for BBC Schools (alongside Tim Whitnall), Take Two, and the long-running 'Make Music Fun' for Channel 4. As a member of the Michael Nyman Band, she also appeared in Peter Greenaway's 1980 mock documentary The Falls, as subject #74, Pollie Fallory. She moved back to performing full time, working with the City Waites, the Consort of Musick, the Martin Best Ensemble, the Michael Nyman Band, the Sadista Sisters and the English Consort of Viols before eventually forming her own band The Burning Bush in order to explore her own Jewish roots.
Skeaping is an exponent of the broadside ballad repertoire, popular songs from sixteenth and seventeenth century England and the popular dance tunes to which they were sung, and also plays baroque violin, fiddle and rebec, among other instruments. Her involvement with the often profane early ballad repertoire led to The Daily Telegraph describing her as "the bawdy babe of Radio 3".
As a solo artist and with her groups she has toured extensively and made more than 30 recordings for Saydisc, Hyperion, ARC Music International, Regis, EMI and Decca (details at www.lucieskeaping.co.uk/cds.htm). Collaborations with other performers, broadcasters, theatre companies, historians and film-makers include Royal National Theatre, Jools Holland, Simon Schama, Waldermar Januszczak, Michael Nyman, Shakespeare's Globe, RSC, John Harle, Dominic Muldowney Ken Dodd and Roman Polanski.
Apart from her regular series for BBC Radio 3, 'The Early Music Show', Skeaping he has written and presented numerous music-documentaries for BBC radio on subjects including Samuel Pepys, ballad opera, the Mary Rose, the Dolmetsch family, the history of the Sephardi Jews, and broadside ballads.
She is author of Broadside Ballads (Faber Music 2006), winner of the Music Industry Association Award for Best Classical Music Book 2006; Let's Make Tudor Music (Stainer and Bell 1999), runner-up TES Best Primary schools music Book; and the recorder anthology Who gave thee thy Jolly Red Nose (Peacock Press 2008). She has contributed articles to the BBC Music Magazine, Early Music Today, BBC History Magazine, History Today, Financial Times and others. Her book (with co-author Roger Clegg), Singing Simpkin and other Bawdy Jigs: Musical Comedy on the Shakespearean Stage was published by the University of Exeter Press in spring 2013 (www.exeterpress.co.uk/index.php?page=results&lang=en&keyword=skeaping).
Skeaping is Ambassador and a member of the judging panel for 'Live Music Now' (promoting young performers) and Patron of the Finchley Children’s Music Group.