[nb 2][3] His father Lewis Charles Leslie Covey-Crump was a musician, and his mother Joyce (née Edwards) was a violinist.
At the Royal College of Music he studied organ under John Birch, voice with Ruth Packer and Wilfred Brown, and degree-level theory.
[6][9] Covey-Crump has the natural range of a tenor but has had to develop a high-lying tessitura to accommodate the requirements of certain early music pieces.
[6] In the 1970s Covey-Crump sang Anglican church music as a tenor lay clerk in St Albans Cathedral Choir, while becoming increasingly well-known for his concert work.
When Gregory Rose's group Singcircle premiered and recorded the 1977 version of Stockhausen's Stimmung, Covey-Crump was part of that ensemble.
[12] Covey-Crump took part in the ensemble Windsor Box & Fir Company, which was founded in 1994 and included Jenny Thomas on flute and recorder and Ian Gammie on guitar.
The ensemble did not prioritise the sartorial aspect of its image; the performers have been "described as looking like four used-car salesmen, or even four funeral directors on one occasion".
[18] Covey-Crump took part in the ensemble's "annual schedule of up to one hundred concerts", its Festival in Cambridge, and its Summer School which moved to Germany in 2000.
[1] His solo performances, of more than half a century,[1] cover lute songs, early Classical, Baroque and Contemporary works.
He has worked extensively and worldwide as a soloist,[5] in the US, Canada, Finland, Sweden, Spain, Germany, France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.
[19] He has performed the works of Bach at the Symphony Hall, Birmingham, King's College, Cambridge, and Eton College, the Christmas Oratorio with the Amsterdam Bach Soloists in the Netherlands, and the St John Passion at the Three Choirs Festival at Hereford Cathedral, besides the cantatas alongside the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, with whom he also performed in Haydn's The Creation.
On 5 June 1970, he sang Schütz's Was hast du verwirket, SWV 307, "with a nice sense of tone and rhythm" at St Mary's Church, Chesham, as part of a Music for a While recital with several other singers, plus organ, piano and cello.
[21] He took part in St Albans International Organ Festival in 1975, and again in 1977 when he assumed 17th-century costume and performed in a cabaret entitled Pepys Night.