The last Hobbit OST
Luck enough to be part of the last ever vocal recordings of the Hobbit OST. Recorded in Air Lyndhurst studios for The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies.
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Luck enough to be part of the last ever vocal recordings of the Hobbit OST. Recorded in Air Lyndhurst studios for The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies.
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It has just been announced that I have been awarded a 2014 Opera Awards Foundation Bursary. The Opera Awards Foundation was founded in 2012 by Harry Hyman and John Allison who recognised that there were many artistically talented individuals whose potential was not being nurtured to development. The Opera Awards Foundation will advance the education of the public in the art of opera in particular by the provision of bursaries or grants to individuals, groups of individuals or other charitable organisations. Bursaries or grants will be made based on financial need to worthy recipients who need further training or other assistance in the development of their careers in opera. Suitable recipients will include singers, conductors and répétiteurs or those operating in associated professions, including directors, set-, costume- and lighting-designers. The Foundation intends to invite applications annually and these will be considered by the Trustees. The primary objectives of the Foundation are to: Recognize the artistic talents of individuals within opera who have a financial need Provide opportunities to develop and display these talents Provide bursaries and grants to the identified individuals Support institutions that promote youth involvement in opera Seek private funds to help meet the Foundations objectives Continue to promote and educate the public in Opera Through the Foundation’s Awards Ceremony provide a showcase for recognition of talented individuals For a full list of winners, please see click here...
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I was asked to fly to Belfast to record for a programme following the stories of four people who had been inspired by President Bill Clinton when he visited Belfast over the past 20 years. I was part of a choir that was to sing for him at the historic turning on of the Christmas lights in Belfast in 1995 and I met him briefly in 2001. The programme will be aired in February 2015.
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I was recently involved in two days of filming in Wookey Hole cave for an advertising campaign for Three Mobile. It was rather tiring, standing around all day in a cold muddy cave, but it was fun. We filmed rather a lot of footage that didn’t make the final cut, including some rather strange scenes in another cage with just me walking about and posing. I think it’s probably a good thing these didn’t end up on TV! The advert has will start airing around 16th March and is set to run for several weeks. Despite only making a small appearance on screen, my voice is used much more. Often I’m heard when I’m not seen. If you dial the number you’ll also hear quite a bit of yours truly! They can now all be found on YouTube...
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The Brief Eric Whitacre, one of the most popular and performed composers of our time, wants you to make the official music video for Enjoy The Silence, from his new EP album. The brief is completely open to interpretation, so take a listen, be inspired by this amazing choral composition and get creative! *Deadline for entries is 25 November 2013, 23:59 GMT. Awards & Judging The winner will receive $4,000 and have their video used as the official music video for Enjoy The Silence. Outstanding videos will also be nominated for the 2013 Genero Awards and in the running for $50,000 in awards. The winner and finalists will be chosen by Eric Whitacre and Genero. Eric Whitacre ‘Whitacre is that rare thing, a modern composer who is both popular and original’ – The Daily Telegraph, London Eric Whitacre is one of the most popular and performed composers of our time, a distinguished conductor, broadcaster and public speaker. His first album as both composer and conductor on Decca/Universal, Light & Gold, won a Grammy® in 2012, reaped unanimous five star reviews and became the no. 1 classical album in the US and UK charts within a week of release. His second album, Water Night, was released on Decca in April 2012 and debuted at no. 1 in the iTunes and Billboard classical chart on the day of release. It features seven world premiere recordings and includes performances from his professional choir, the Eric Whitacre Singers, the London Symphony Orchestra, Julian Lloyd Webber and Hila Plitmann. His compositions also feature on multiple other recordings made in Europe, North America and Australasia. His ground-breaking Virtual Choir, Lux Aurumque, received over a million views on YouTube in just 2 months (now 3 million), featuring 185 singers from 12 different countries. Virtual Choir 2.0, Sleep, was released in April 2011 and involved over 2,000 voices from 58 countries. Virtual Choir 3, Water Night, received 3,746 submissions from 73 counties and launched at Lincoln Center, New York and revealed online in April 2012. The latest, Virtual Choir 4: Fly to Paradise, released in July 2013, received over 8,400 submissions from 101 countries and launched at the Coronation Festival at Buckingham Palace/BBC 1....
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Gareth Malone has called on British choirs to drop Purcell for punk after the award-winning choirmaster unveiled a new project in which a hand-picked group of singers lend their voices to radical new arrangements of hardcore rap, rock and R&B songs. Malone, credited with leading a nationwide revival of community singing through his television series, topped the charts with the Military Wives, the choir he formed from the partners of serving military personnel in Afghanistan. The Bafta-winning broadcaster now promises a “watershed” in choral singing with a new album, Voices, which he says is designed to expand the repertoire of British choirs beyond tried and trusted works by Bach and Handel and selections from the Glee songbook. Malone has assembled “a new and revolutionary choir” of 18-25 year-olds after putting up posters of himself around Britain as a Lord Kitchener-style figure, with the phrase “your choirmaster needs you”. The first track released from the album is a cover of “Guillotine” by Death Grips (video above – with strong language), an experimental Californian hip-hop band, who mix hardcore punk, dub and militantly political lyrics to create a highly confrontational sound. Malone’s choral reinvention retains the title and repeats one line of the original lyric – “Hidden art, between and beneath, every fragmented, figure of speech” – to create a haunting interpretation, which transforms Death Grips’ aggression into sacred vocal music more closely resembling the Tallis Scholars. The track, which Malone has posted on the Soundcloud website, will be followed on Voices by versions of songs by Fleet Foxes and Alicia Keys among others, with guest vocals from Lianne Le Havas, fashion model Amber Le Bon and Guillemots’ Fyfe Dangerfield. Malone told The Independent: “In choosing music to record for this choir, David Kosten (producer, whose credits include Bat For Lashes) and I asked ourselves the question: ‘what is the unlikeliest piece of music for a choir to sing?’. “David suggested Death Grips’ track ‘Guillotine’ and we wondered if we could pull it off. The result is, I think, a choir sounding very different from how you’d expect and yet it’s still distinctly a British Choral sound.” Malone, who helped Gary Barlow record a No 1 single for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, added: “Death Grips appealed because they are inherently experimental. Consequently David felt they’d be unlikely to object to a choir covering their song because they’d appreciate the creativity and...
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With the release of the choir’s first album ‘Voices’ just a month away the Classic BRIT Awards at the Royal Albert Hall was the perfect enviornment for Gareth Malone to show off his new choir. We were lucky enough to perform along side the biggest names in classical music like Lang Lang, Nicola Benedetti and Ludovico Einaudi. Below is a video from the event. We are singing So Close, an arrangement by Michael Higgins of the theme tune of the hit ITV drama series,...
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I am delighted to announce that from September 2013 I will begin a two year Vocal Performance Masters course at the Royal Academy of Music in London. I am grateful to have been given the Marjorie Gould Award which will go some way towards covering my fees for the first year.
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Despite only taking up the position at St George’s, Hanover Square only a few months ago I have just been offered the vacancy at The Royal Hospital, Chelsea. It’s sad to leave St George’s so soon, especially because the choir is so friendly and welcoming. I am, however, looking forward to starting this new challenge. The Director of Music, Will Vann, has been in the job for a little over a year so it’s nice to join him at the start of his journey, too. I start next Sunday! The Chapel Choir is a professional group of twelve singers (4 sopranos, 2 altos, 2 tenors and 4 basses) who are chosen not only for their vocal quality but also general musicianship and team skills. They are drawn from a wide variety of musical backgrounds and much interest is shown by London’s community of singers when a vacancy arises. Most of its members work as full-time musicians, either as singers of choral music or opera, or as pianists and conductors. The choir’s wide and varied repertoire reflects all musical periods and choral styles by a wide range of composers, from Renaissance polyphony to the 21st century. The choir sings Choral Matins on most Sunday mornings, though an increasing number of mass settings are now being added to the repertoire, and also provides the music at many weddings, carol services and funerals of Chelsea Pensioners. The choir has sung in several broadcasts of the popular BBC Television programme Songs of Praise and BBC Radio’s Sunday Half Hour and Choral Evensong. It has recorded for Guild Music (Remembrance and Resurrection), Creature Music (O Perfect Love) and produced a promotional CD (for the National Appeal) entitled Valiant Hearts. This featured the Requiems by Fauré and Rutter. This choir’s regular concerts at the Royal Hospital are always popular sell-outs: it is also available for concerts and other events outside the Royal...
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Amongst the many endeavours funded by the Carnegie Trust marking its centenary in 2013), was the publication and editing of ‘Tudor Church Music’ in ten large folio volumes of music, with 50 performing pieces published individually. This had a considerable impact on the revival of this important music: for the first time a significant body of the greatest Tudor compositions became accessible to scholars, performers and listeners having languished in cathedrals, museums and colleges. It also inspired a further generation of English composers after its resurrection including Howells, Britten and Vaughan Williams. Stile Antico presents a varied selection of the finest pieces from TCM in a programme centred around William Byrd s masterful five-part mass. Stile Antico is an elite ensemble of young British singers, working without a conductor, each contributing artistically to the musical result. They are now established as the crack ensemble to beat, having enjoyed huge success, via their SACD recordings for harmonia mundi USA. Awards include the 2009 Gramophone Award for Early Music [Song of Songs] which also reached the top of the US Classical Chart. Their performances have repeatedly been praised for their vitality, commitment and imaginative response to text. Highlights of Stile Antico’s 2012-13 season include a series of concerts as co-curators of the Wigmore Hall’s William Byrd: Sacred Music festival, and this new recording celebrating the centenary of the Carnegie UK Trust, publisher of the pioneering Tudor Church Music edition. Carnegie Trust: changing minds, changing lives 1913-2013 Set up by Andrew Carnegie in 1913 to improve the wellbeing of the people of the United Kingdom and Ireland, it is one of the oldest and most respected charitable trusts in the British Isles. The Carnegie medal of philanthropy, given to those who have dedicated their private wealth to public good, will be presented in the Scottish Parliament in October 2013, in a week of events seeking to engage the Scottish public with the legacy of Andrew...
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