Caroline Clemmow

pianist, Soloists
Caroline Clemmow

Caroline Clemmow has a rich and varied musical background. As a talented young violinist, she led the Kent County Youth Orchestra whilst still focussing mainly on her pianistic skills. She was awarded a piano scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music where she won many prizes for both solo and ensemble playing. As a chamber musician she collaborated with many instrumentalists (both string and wind) and singers and became a founder member of the Hartley Piano Trio, which gained international recognition by its concert and festival appearances, broadcasts and numerous recordings, including the complete trios of Spohr on the Naxos label.
While also performing concertos and giving recitals as a soloist Caroline derives particular pleasure from the field of chamber music; she has worked with such diverse groups as Serenata, Kaleidoscope and the Koenig Ensemble, and has covered an extremely wide repertoire, ranging from the classics and romantics to complex twentieth-century works with the last-named group in a seven-city tour of the former Soviet Union, and percussion-and-piano works with Evelyn Glennie. Her many activities have led to numerous London concerts, regular broadcasts and invitations to major festivals.
An important part of her work was the celebrated piano duo with Anthony Goldstone, who died in 2017, described by Gramophone as “a dazzling husband and wife team”. They had a unique and enterprising repertoire on one and two pianos and were critically acclaimed for their pioneering broadcasts and CD recordings, the latter over forty in number, including a ground-breaking seven-CD cycle of the complete original piano duets of Schubert. Their BBC broadcasts often included first hearings of unjustly neglected works, demonstrating their painstaking research by mixing famous masterpieces and fascinating rarities, and they built up an international following.

 

Richard Dowling

Soloists, Tenor
Richard Dowling

Richard Dowling is a graduate of the Royal Academy of Music’s Opera Course, where he was privileged to perform the role of Tom Rakewell in Stravinsky’s ‘The Rake’s Progress’ and as a soloist in the Academy’s complete Bach cantatas series. He is now supported by Opera Prelude and regularly appears in their concerts and lectures.

He sang the role of Ferrando in Mozart’s ‘Cosi fan tutte’ with West Green Opera and, working with the inspirational Graham Vick, performed the role of the Sailor in Birmingham Opera Company’s production of Purcell’s ‘Dido and Aeneas’. He has sung the role of Nemorino in Donizetti’s ‘Elisir d’amore’ with Jackdaws OperaPLUS. He has been a regular with Garsington Opera and amongst other roles performed as the Glassmaker in Britten’s ‘Death in Venice’ conducted by Steuart Bedford. He also sang the role of Count Almaviva in Rossini’s ‘The Barber of Seville’ as a young artist with Mid Wales Opera.

He is also an experienced oratorio artist, engagements including Britten’s ‘Ballad of Heroes’ and Mozart’s ‘Requiem’ in the Bridgewater Hall, Finzi’s ‘Dies Natalis’ in Brentwood Cathedral, Janacek’s ‘Otcenas’ in Gorton Monastery and the ‘Messiah’ in Lincoln Cathedral.

Emily Hodkinson

Mezzo-Soprano, Soloists
Emily Hodkinson

Emily is a Nottingham-born mezzo-soprano. She studies at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland on
the MMus Vocal Performance Course, studying with Clare Shearer and is supported by a
scholarship. She is the winner of the John and Barbara Beaumont Bursary and the Liz Chant
Bursary.
She holds a First Class Honours Degree in Music from the University of York and was a Fellow
of the National Youth Choirs of Great Britain in 2017-18. She sang with Genesis Sixteen from
2016-17 under the direction of Harry Christophers and Eamonn Dougan.
Recent and forthcoming appearances include Elgar’s The Music Makers with Nottingham
Festival Chorus in February 2019, Sara (Tobias and the Angel, Dove) for Nottingham Cathedral
and Streetwise Opera and recitals in the Southwell Minster and the Nottingham Classics preconcert
recital. Alongside oratorio with the European Union Chamber Orchestra at St John Smith
Square and with Aldeburgh Voices at the Snape Maltings Easter Weekend.
Emily had the honour of being the first Female Alto to sing with the Men and Boys Choir at
Southwell Minster in February 2018, a landmark moment in the Minsters 900+ year history.

Carris Jones

Mezzo-Soprano, Soloists
Carris Jones

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

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.

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.