West Wight Arts Association

Countertenor Magid El-Bushra was born in Khartoum, Sudan and studied Music at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he also held a Choral Scholarship. He continued his studies at the Royal College of Music, where he won the Century Prize for Early Music. He subsequently studied at the Flanders Opera Studio in Ghent, Belgium, where his roles included Arcetro in Caccini's Euridice, Baba the Turk in Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress, and scenes from Mozart's Ascanio in Alba (Ascanio) and Mitridate (Farnace), and Rossini's Tancredi (Tancredi). He has performed the Sorceress in Purcell's Dido and Aeneas with Opera Fuoco/David Stern at the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam and at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées, Paris, and La Tragedia/Dafne in Caccini's Euridice in Bruges as part of the Festival van Vlaanderen with Scherzi Musicali. He has also appeared in Monteverdi's Orfeo with Les Arts Florissants/William Christie at the Teatro Real, Madrid, and in the opera Callirhoé by Destouches, with Le Concert Spirituel/Hervé Niquet atthe Opéra Nationale de Montpellier. He covered the role of Nireno in Glyndebourne Festival Opera's 2009 revival of Handel's Giulio Cesare, as well as covering Oberon in Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream for British Youth Opera. In the 2009-2010 season he sang Little Ceasar in the pastiche opera Nachtwache at the Oldenburgisches Staatstheater.

On the concert platform Magid has performed as a soloist in Charpentier's Epitaphium Carpentarii with Il Seminario Musicale/Gerard Lesne which was broadcast from the Chapelle Royale de Versailles on French national television; Pergolesi's Stabat Mater at the Casa Da Musica, Porto under the direction of LaurenceCummings; Buxtehude's Das Jüngste Gericht with Masaaki Suzuki in Japan; Bach's Mass in G and Mass in A with Ensemble Pygmalion at the Festival de la Chaise Dieu (recorded for Alpha – Diapason d'Or de l'Année 2008); the premiere of Klaus Huber's Miserere Hominibus at the Opéra Bastille, Paris with Les Jeunes Solistes, with subsequent performances at the Lucerne Festival (also recorded for Soupir), and the premiere of Robert HP Platz' Boutaden for the Westdeustcherundfunk in Cologne.

Magid has appeared in numerous broadcasts for BBC Radio 3, Radio Suisse and Radio France. He is a founder member of the baroque ensemble La Sfera Musicale, with which he has toured Sweden and Japan, where they won the top prize at the 2005 International Early Music Competition in Yamanashi. They were also prizewinners at the 2006 Early Music Competition in Bruges. Recent oratorio engagements have included Handel's Israel in Egypt and Bach's Magnificat at the Cadogan Hall, Handel's Dixit Dominus and Vivaldi's Gloria at St Martin in the Fields, and Bach's St Matthew Passion at Carlisle Cathedral. He also recorded the Pie Jesu in the Requiem of Duruflé (Harmonia Mundi).

Future engagements include a recital of Byrd consort songs with the viol consort Phantasm at de Bijloke, Gent, Handel's Messiah with Highgate Choral Society, and the role of David in a staged production of Handel's Saul at the Oldenburgisches Staatstheater.

In November 2008, Magid won first prize at the Concorso Musica Sacra in Rome, and is now a member of the ensemble I Virtuosi Della Musica Sacra.