Judy Louie Brown

Mezzo-Soprano
Judy Louie Brown

 

 

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.

Michael Overbury

Continuo, Soloists
Michael Overbury

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
Robert Parker

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 17th 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 21st 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.

 

Alison Rose

Soloists, Soprano
Alison Rose

Alison Rose is the winner of the 2015 Maggie Teyte Prize and a 2017 Leonard Ingrams Award. Born in East London, Alison’s first forays into music making came through the Redbridge Music Service. She subsequently went on to undergraduate studies at the RNCM and postgraduate at the RAM. She is a graduate of the GSMD Opera School and the National Opera Studio and is an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music.

 

Previous operatic roles include Papagena Die Zauberflöte for Glyndebourne Festival Opera and the BBC Proms; Barbarina Le nozze di Figaro for Garsington Festival Opera and English National Opera; Susanna The Marriage of Figaro for Opera North’s Whistlestop Tour; The Governess Turn of the Screw for Bury Court Opera and Vixen The Cunning Little Vixen for Grimeborn Opera. On screen, Alison performed the role of Olivia for an animated production of Aidan for English Touring Opera, and the role of La Bergère for VOPERA’s award winning animation of Ravel’s L’Enfant et les Sortilèges. Recent engagements include Flavia in Handel’s Silla for the Northern Opera Group and Klara in Stephen McNeff’s Beyond the Garden at Lichfield Festival and Three Choirs Festival.

 

Concert highlights include Vaughan Williams’ Serenade to Music at the BBC Last Night of the Proms, Handel’s Messiah at the Royal Albert Hall, Britten’s Les Illuminations and Mahler’s Symphony no.4, both for the Southwell Music Festival, and solo recitals at the Oxford Lieder Festival and the Royal Opera House Crush Room.

 

http://www.alisonrosesoprano.com

 

 

 

James Savage-Hanford

Soloists, Tenor
James Savage-Hanford

James read Music at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and Royal Holloway, University of London, before undertaking postgraduate training in vocal performance at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, studying with Adrian Thompson.

James made his international debut as Ferrando Così fan tutte with the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra at the Birgitta Festival, Tallinn, in 2016. Other operatic highlights include Don Ottavio Don Giovanni, Bardolfo Falstaff (Black Cat Opera Company) and Remendado Carmen (OperaUpClose). Earlier this year, he made his solo debut at St Martin-in-the-Fields, in a performance of Mozart’s Requiem alongside the Brandenburg Sinfonia.

When not singing, James is also active as a musicologist, and is currently studying for a PhD on the music of George Enescu at Royal Holloway, where he is also a visiting tutor. www.jamessavagehanford.com.

James Williams

Baritone, Soloists
James Williams

James Williams was born in London and studied at the Royal Academy of Music. Since graduating, James has distinguished himself as a successful artist on the operatic stage as well as in concert and recital.

In 2015-16, James completed the trilogy of the Mozart/Da Ponte operas, performing the title role of Don Giovanni, Don Alfonso/Così fan tutte and Il Conte/Le nozze di Figaro in fully-staged productions across the UK with Dulwich Opera Company and Opera Seria.

In oratorio, James has performed as baritone soloist in: Brahms’s Ein Deutsches Requiem, Finzi’s In Terra Pax, Handel’s Messiah, Mozart’s Requiem, and Jonathan Rathbone’s Christmas Truce.

BBC Bingham: Episode One – 25th March 2020

BBC Bingham Productions

Dear BDCS

Here is our first attempt at a video substitute for rehearsals. I hope you enjoy it. Start by clicking on Video 1 and then as you work through you will be told when to click on the subsequent links. Some of the YouTube links start with adverts, these will either play out, or you can click on the ‘skip advert’ button. Each link opens a new window, so by closing the window when the video ends you come back to BBC Bingham.

  1. Video 1_Guy: Introductions (8:02)
  2. Video 2_Ca’ the Yowes (arr. R.Vaughan Williams) (4.27)
  3. Video 3_Guy (1:28)
  4. Video 4_Cerys Matthews – ‘Sospan Fach’ (2.09)
  5. Video 5_Guy (0.52)
  6. Video 6_ Voces8, Sibeal -Traditional: Carrickfergus (Arr.Pacey) (4.29)
  7. Video 7_Guy: ‘The Final Choice’ (0.32)
  8. Video 8_Steeleye Span-All Around My Hat (Live Cropredy) (4.22)
  9. Video 9_Guy: ‘So that’s the plan.’ (1:16)
  10. Sound recording_of Judy Brown: Robert Burns: My luve is like a red red rose. (2.39)
  11. Sound recording_ of Judy Brown: Tchaikovsky Queen of Spades – Prodrugi Milye (4.30)
  12. Video 12_Guy: ‘So I hope you found that interesting’ (0.23)

 

Extra video you might like to watch:

Dives and Lazarus – Maddy Prior

Vaughan Williams Five Variants on Dives and Lazarus (with score)

Barbara Dickson she Moved through the Fair

Extra performance of Sopan Fach

 

Guy’s email for future suggestions – guyscottturner@gmail.com

 

BBC Bingham: Episode Eleven – 3rd June 2020. Eric Thiman by Guy Turner

BBC Bingham Productions

This week Guy Turner takes us on a musical journey with the organist, teacher, conductor, and prolific composer, Eric Thiman (1900 – 1975). As The Thiman Collection’s Archivist, and previously singer in one of Thiman’s Choral Societies, Guy provides a fascinating insight into Thiman, interspersed with recordings of his works, some of which BDCS have performed.

 

Click on this link to here the episode

BBC Bingham: Episode thirteen – 17th June 2020. Variations by Guy Turner (Part 1)

BBC Bingham Productions

This week’s BBC Bingham is based on a talk which I gave at a conference for GCSE and A level musicians earler this year. It also relates to next week’s programme, which will be introducing you to the Folksong Sequence commission which I have now completed and which we will be doing at the Jubilee Prom next year. The talk was originally designed for people who were going to be composing their own variations, but I hope it will give plenty of insights to people who are only planning to perform and listen to music.

Click on the text ‘Variations_1’ below, and then the sound file that follows, and then ‘Variations 2&3’ and so on………

Variations_1

Variations_2&3

Variations_4&5

Variations_6

Variations_7

Variations_8

Variations_9

Clapping Music

 

List of additional links

Paganini Caprice No 24  This is a lockdown video made just the day before I updated the talk for BDCS – 12 famous violinists taking turns. Put together by Nicola Benedetti.

Ives Variation on America

Rachmaninov Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini

Lloyd Webber Variations  or you may prefer the orchestral version

 

BBC Bingham: Episode fourteen – 24th June 2020. Folk Song Sequence

BBC Bingham Productions

As we approach what would have been the end of our singing season for 2019/2020, to give the production team a chance of a break BBC Bingham will change its broadcast frequency from weekly to fortnightly. The next episode of BBC Bingham (episode fifteen) will be aired on July 8th with another Desert Island Discs, so tune in to see which castaway is Guy Turner’s guest that week.

The following broadcast (July 22nd) will be a special episode comprising our annual newsletter, which will contain important information about the forthcoming season 2020/2021, and also our Jubilee Year 2021/2022, so make sure you tune in for that.

Today’s episode follows on from the variations episode last week and is an introduction to the Folk Song Sequence Guy has written for us to perform at our Jubilee Prom Concert. Click on the ‘Folk Song Sequence’ below, and follow the individual scores alongside.

Folk Song Sequence

 

Scores:

Bruton song – Full Score

Laudibus in Sanctis

Ca’ the Yowes

Sospan Fach

Carrickfergus

All around my hat