At the age of 21, he was appointed Professor of Lute at the Guildhall School for Music and Drama, a position he held until 1996. From 1993 to 1999 he was Professor of Historical Plucked Instruments at the Hochschule der Künste, Berlin, Germany. From January 1999 he has been Professor of Lute at the Early Music Institute, Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University and, from January 2005, has taught the lute at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, Holland. He is internationally recognized as the foremost authority on basso continuo for plucked instruments, and has written the standard modern textbook on continuo playing on the lute and related instruments:
The following textbook is in preparation:
Lute and Early Guitar - a Performance Practice Handbook Original didactic sources from 1500 - c.1760, for lute and guitar. Sources in facsimile, with translations and full editorial comment; covering the working repertoire of a modern lutenist. It will be a book in which one may find the answers to performance practice questions taken directly from original sources.
Professional career
His recording life began in the mid-1970s; while studying at music college, he played viol, cittern, rebec and violin as well as his more usual instruments, lute, theorbo, mandolin and baroque guitar on recordings with some of the English pioneers of early music of that time, such as David Munrow with The Early Music Consort and Alfred Deller with The Deller Consort. From 1974 to 1990 Nigel North played in baroque operas, baroque orchestras and chamber groups and accompanied singers in concerts, participating in over 100 recordings. Notable groups and people with whom he has worked:
With Andrew Manze and John Toll he formed the ensemble Romanesca in 1988; they played together for the next 10 years. His solo lute debut was a Bach programme at the Wigmore Hall in 1977; in 1985 he performed all of Bach's lute works for the first time in London. Numerous recitals and recordings followed and from 1984 to 2001 he toured worldwide. He has made transcriptions for Baroque lute of Bach's complete solo violin works and solo cello suites, which he has performed at the Wigmore Hall and recorded on a 4-CD set, Bach on the Lute. Other notable recordings include the complete lute works of John Dowland, the complete lute works of Robert Johnson, as well as a critically acclaimed recording of "A Varietie of Lute Lessons," and a new series of CD's dedicated to the works of Sylvius Leopold Weiss, among many others.