Bingham Choral | Page 3 | Bingham & District Choral Society

Harry Jaques

News, Soloists, Tenor

Harry Jacques originally studied music at Bristol University, later teaching at Oakham School as Organist and Teacher of Music. Chorally, he has sung with numerous cathedral choirs, as a VOCES8 Scholar, and with ensembles including Gabrieli Consort, Polyphony and London Choral Sinfonia. His oratorio work spans Bach, Handel, Mozart, Mendelssohn and Verdi, supported in part by the Josephine Baker Trust.

In 2022, he began studying at Guildhall School of Music and Drama with Adrian Thompson and John Evans, supported by the D’Oyly Carte Charitable Trust, the Edith Vogel Bursary and The Worshipful Company of Grocers. Operatic highlights include being Young Artist at Waterperry Opera Festival, understudying Nemorino with Wild Arts, projects with Iain Burnside and David Hill, and Messiah at Lincoln Cathedral. In 2024 he joined Glyndebourne Chorus for productions including Die Zauberflöte, Carmen, The Merry Widow and Tristan und Isolde, also performing at the BBC Proms.

Studying on Guildhall’s opera course, roles in scenes included Leicester (Maria Stuarda), Mayor Upfold (Albert Herring), Roméo (Roméo et Juliette), Le Chevalier (Dialogues des Carmélites) and Essex (Gloriana). In Autumn 2025 he performed as Heinrich in DerWald (Ethel Smyth) and as Bruto in Lucrezia (Respighi). In 2026, he performed as Sir Phillip in Guildhall’s production of Owen Wingrave (Britten) before returning to Glyndebourne for the summer festival to cover Squeak in Billy Budd (Britten) and sing chorus for Tosca, Il Turco in Italia and Billy Budd.

Carris Jones

Mezzo-Soprano, Soloists

Born in Surrey but largely raised in Southeast Asia, Carris Jones studied at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge and the Royal Academy of Music, graduating with a DipRam, the Academy’s highest performance award.

On the operatic stage, Carris has performed and covered roles at English National Opera, Iford Arts, Garsington Opera and Bury Court Opera. Carris made her Royal Festival Hall debut as Renee in the European premiere of Shostakovich’s Orango, with Esa Pekka-Salonen and the Philharmonia.

Carris’ concert highlights include Britten Phaedra with members of the Philharmonia, Bach Magnificat for Laurence Cummings and the English Concert, and performances of Elgar Sea Pictures and Mahler Kindertotenlieder. As a consort singer, Carris has sung across five continents. She was a founder member of Stile Antico, and collaborated with Sting on his Dowland project, Songs from the Labyrinth.

In 2017, Carris joined the Choir of St Paul’s Cathedral, the first female Vicar Choral ever to be appointed.

Matthew Keighley

Soloists, Tenor

Matthew Keighley is currently a master’s student at the Royal College of Music. He is a Soirée d’Or Scholar and working under the tutelage of Tim Evans-Jones. He is also supported by the Josephine Baker Trust. Prior to his studies at the Royal College of Music, Matthew was a Lay Clerk at Gloucester Cathedral.

Matthew is in growing demand across the UK and Ireland as a concert soloist. Recent performance highlights include Handel’s Messiah with Tewkesbury Abbey Schola Cantorum and Ethel Smyth’s Mass in D in Southwark Cathedral with London Oriana. Matthew was also recently involved in an Irish tour of Handel’s Theodora with the Irish Baroque Orchestra. Further afield, Matthew performed last summer in Corfu and Italy singing as a soloist for the Ionian University Choir.

Since starting music college in September, Matthew has been gathering experience on stage. He was delighted to be involved in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, directed by Sir Thomas Allen and looks forward to the College’s summer opera production where he has been cast as Errand Boy in Lennox Berkeley’s A Dinner Engagement.

Thomas Li

Baritone, Soloists

Thomas Li is studying A-Levels at The King’s School in Grantham, including Music. He has been a member of the choir at St Mary Magdalene Church in Newark since the age of 8, where he currently holds an organ scholar post. He has performed various solos during church services, and has also sung other cameo roles, including the Youth in Mendelssohn’s Elijah and the Young St. Nicholas in Britten’s oratorio, whilst still a treble, and the baritone solo in Faure’s Requiem. He is a member of the RSCM’s Millennium Youth Choir, and he has earned the RSCM Gold Award. He is working towards his ARSM singing diploma, and he is also an accomplished pianist and jazz saxophonist. When he is not making music, Thomas enjoys hiking and outdoor activities, Explorer Scouts, playing rugby for his school, and he has a black belt in Tae Kwon Do.

Judy Louie Brown

Mezzo-Soprano

Scottish mezzo-soprano Judy Louie Brown read Music at the University of Edinburgh and received her Masters from the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, and is now a much sought-after recitalist, opera and consort singer. Described by Opera Magazine as singing with “steadiness, purity, dignity and command”, she works with Dunedin Consort, Scottish Opera, the Monteverdi Choir, English Concert and the Academy of Ancient Music. She has performed at the Proms, Aix-en-Provence Festival, London Handel Festival, Handel Festival in Halle, Germany, Edinburgh International Festival, the Barbican’s Contemporary Music Season and at the Tête-à-Tête opera festival, and on stages as diverse as Tokyo’s Suntory Hall, the Wigmore Hall, the Vienna Musikverein and St Magnus’ Cathedral, Orkney.

Praised for the “dynamism and delicacy” of her singing, solo performance highlights include the Orcadian premiere of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ song cycle for mezzo-soprano and chamber ensemble The Birds in St Magnus Cathedral, Orkney, a recital of the lieder of Schubert and Hans Gál in the Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, Handel’s Messiah for The Edinburgh Royal Choral Union in the Usher Hall, and the Angel in Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius in Southwark Cathedral.

Recent performances include the St Matthew Passion with Dunedin Consort, Second Witch in Errolyn Wallen’s Dido’s Ghost, at the Barbican, Edinburgh International Festival and Buxton Opera Festival and Messiah with Nevil Holt Opera. Forthcoming engagements include Mozart’s Coronation Mass in the Barnes Music Festival, Rutter’s Feel the Spirit in Southwell Minster, Dunster and Brighton Festivals with the Marian Consort, and a solo lieder recital in Vienna.

Samuel Mitchinson

Baritone, Soloists

Sam began his singing life as a chorister at Southwell Minster before becoming a Magnus Scholar at the church of St Mary Magdalene, Newark. He is also a music scholar at Worksop College where notable solo work has included Handel’s Messiah, Mozart’s Coronation Mass and Mozart’s Requiem. He recently gave a recital in Newark’s renowned ‘Music for Market’ series and sang in the Leicester Philharmonic Choir’s performance of Bach’s famous cantata Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben. In his scarce moments of free time he likes to relax with his dogs.

Michael Overbury

Continuo, Soloists

Organist and harpsichordist Michael Overbury’s early musical influences centred on Farnham and London, where he was introduced to the glories of the English liturgical tradition, and it was here also that his organ teacher Stephen Thomson inspired in him a love of the harpsichord.

Horizons broadened with an Organ Scholarship to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. After graduating he held a number of posts including deputy organist and choir master at the Cathedral and Abbey Church at St Alban’s. After winning First Prize in the 1982 Manchester International Organ Competition, he appeared twice as soloist at the Royal Festival Hall and has continued to play with many choirs and orchestras.

He is currently accompanist to Ruddington and District Choral Society, and to Sinfonia Chorale.

Robert Parker

Instrumentalist, Soloists

Originally from Bath, Robert is a Graduate and Fellow of the Trinity College of Music, London. He studied horn with John Burden, former principal horn of the London Symphony Orchestra and top session player – the John Burden Horn Quartet can be heard at the start of the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club album!

Robert has appeared as a soloist across the country including in London, Somerset, Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, and the East Midlands. He has performed concerti by J S Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Telemann, Schumann and Richard Strauss, and also Benjamin Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, becoming something of a champion of the horn and new music for the horn along the way… He has had music written especially for him, including Andy Evans’ Horn Concerto which he premièred in 2009 at the Albert Hall, Nottingham. Andy said that he wrote the piece ‘to showcase Robert’s lyrical and sensitive playing, that I have listened to over many years’. Robert was invited to play the horn obbligato in A Celebration of Psalms, a new choral work composed in 2013 by Burton Joyce based David Machell, who then wrote a Horn Concerto for him. Robert gave a “bravura performance” at its première in St Mary’s Church, Nottingham in July 2018. He is looking forward immensely to playing the horn obbligato part in Guy Turner’s Lux Aeterna with the B&DCS on 17^th November 2018.

As a busy freelance musician, Robert plays principal horn with the English Pro Musica, Lincolnshire Chamber Orchestra British Philharmonic Concert Orchestra, National Festival Orchestra (including ten years with the International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival at Buxton’s Opera House), along with numerous other professional orchestras, and has been a member of the Southwell Festival Sinfonia since its inception in 2014, under the baton of artistic director Marcus Farnsworth. Robert enjoys chamber music, performing with the Hough Ensemble (a piano and wind group) at a variety of venues, including Nottingham’s Theatre Royal, Worksop College as part of their Worksop Music Concert Series, Grantham Music Club and Bingham Community Arts. He also regularly gives horn and piano recitals with Antony Clare.

The year 2018 heralds Robert’s 25th anniversary as Music Director of the Nottingham Concert Band, a thriving community band based in West Bridgford. They are fresh from their tenth season of Proms in the Park, having celebrated Armed Forces Day in Bridgford Park on 30th June 2018 in collaboration with Rushcliffe Borough Council. He is currently grants and donations officer for the British Horn Society as well as being a member of the executive committee, and has been active in co-organising a number of BHS national festivals, most recently in 2017 in Glasgow: this year’s festival is on 21^st October 2018 in Cardiff.

For relaxation, Robert and his wife Ann enjoy walking their greyhound Mr Piper by the River Trent, and tending their allotment.

Stella Radić

Mezzo-Soprano, Soloists

Stella Radić, previously a Lay Clerk at Peterborough Cathedral, has been recently appointed the role of Alto Lay Vicar at Lincoln Cathedral. She trained as a Chorister at Peterborough and has been involved in choirs ever since.

Stella undertook her undergraduate in Drama and Theatre at the University of Lincoln, during which she became a Choral Scholar at Lincoln Cathedral. Recently, she trained with Harry Christophers and Eammon Dougan as part of The Genesis Sixteen programme (cohort twelve). With them she performed at venues such as St Jame’s Piccadilly and King’s Place, in a variety of works including Tallis’ Spem in Alium.

Last season, Stella performed as a soloist in Bach’s St John’s Passion in Lincoln and she appeared with Stamford Choral in Mozart’s Vespers. In her spare time she is working on her tailoring business along with being Social Media officer for Dowland Youth Works.

Clarice Rarity

Instrumentalist, News, Soloists

Clarice Rarity is a violinist known for her expressive playing, musical sensitivity and curiosity as a performer. She studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the Royal College of Music, where she developed a particular interest in contemporary classical music and challenging performance conventions. Her repertoire encompasses music from the Baroque to the present day, cross genre and sometimes cross cultural collaborations. Her interest in new music has led to performances with a number of exciting contemporary ensembles, including Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and Ensemble Modern. She has performed as a soloist and chamber musician at venues and festivals including Wigmore Hall, Birmingham Symphony Hall, the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and the Viitasaari New Music Festival, and has also performed internationally as part of Akram Khan’s acclaimed production XENOS.

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