A magnificent evening of music in which the Various Voices’ Festival Chorus joins forces with Southbank Centre’s Voicelab and the London Philharmonic Choir and New London Children’s Choir to perform three very different works.
Voicelab and Various Voices are delighted to be performing Carl Orff’s enduringly popular and rousing Carmina Burana and Orlando Gough’s Vogel – written for Voicelab for the Overture Weekend for the re-opening of Royal Festival Hall in 2007.
This special concert is conducted by Howard Moody, principal conductor and artistic director of Sarum Orchestra.
Programme:
Vogel (Orlando Gough) performed by Voicelab.
Carmina Burana (Carl Orff) performed by Various Voices Festival Choir, Voicelab, London Philharmonic Choir, New London Children’s Choir and soloists.
Conductor – Howard Moody
Soprano – Nicole Tibbels
Tenor – Nigel Robson
Baritone – Mark Holland
Piano – Andrew Ball, Michael Ierace
Percussion – Chris Brannick
and his Favoured Few
Chris Brannick, Stephen Hiscock, Catherine Ring, Nigel Shipway,
Genevieve Wilkins and Caz Wolfson.
Howard Moody has a versatile career as a composer, conductor and keyboard player. He is Artistic Director of the Sarum Orchestra, and has also conducted the BBCSO, Halle, RLPO, Ulster Orchestra, Bournemouth Orchestras, Orchestra della Toscana, OAE, Opera Factory, Icelandic Opera, Netherlands Radio Chorus, Monteverdi Choir, Schola Cantorum of Oxford, Romanian State Chorus, Salisbury Festival Chorus and choral and instrumental groups throughout Europe. He has composed works for Station House Opera, Southern Cathedrals Festival, Bangladesh Festival, Jack de Johnette, The Anvil, English National Opera, Paco Peña, CMW, Derby Playhouse, Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Future commissions include a new opera for Brussels Opera in 2010. He has recorded for ECM, Chandos and the BBC.
Orlando Gough was a founder member of the bands The Lost Jockey & Man Jumping. He writes music mostly for the theatre – operas, plays, dance pieces, music-theatre, directs The Shout, an extraordinary choir of diverse soloists (
), and devises and directs large-scale site-specific choral pieces. Recent work includes The Singing River, for 12 choirs, 18 boats, two cranes and a locomotive (Theater der Welt, Stuttgart), an oratorio The Most Beautiful Man From The Sea (Welsh National Opera), We Turned On The Light (Proms), Swarm for marauding chorus (Barbican), a music-theatre piece Critical Mass (Almeida Opera Festival), an opera The Finnish Prisoner (Paddock Productions and Finnish National Opera), a music-theatre piece One, Two for six pairs of identical twins (Dartington), Open Port the closing event of Stavanger 2008 European Capital of Culture, for 750 singers, brass band, wooden trumpets, and Raketensymphonie the opening event of Linz09 European Capital of Culture, for voices and fireworks. He has just written a piece for children On The Rim Of The World commissioned by all the major opera houses in the UK, and is working on Just Add Water? with the choreographer Shobana Jeyasingh. He is an associate artist of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.
Andrew Ball (Piano) is recognised as one of the outstanding British pianists and teachers of his generation. He plays a large repertoire in which contemporary works and chamber music have always had an important place. He has given recitals of Ives and Busoni at the Wigmore Hall, performed Messiaen’s Couleurs de la Cité Celeste at the Henry Wood Proms and gave the British premiere of Sofia Gubaidulina’s Piano Sonata at the Bath Festival. He has worked closely with many composers including Michael Tippett whose piano sonatas he has frequently performed as a cycle. CD recordings range from the Tippett song cycles with Martyn Hill to the complete music for piano and orchestra of Billy Mayerl. A dedicated teacher, he gives masterclasses internationally and was Head of Keyboard at the Royal College of Music from 1999 to 2005.
Michael Ierace (Piano) was born and raised in Adelaide. He is currently studying for his Postgraduate Diploma at the Royal College of Music, London with Andrew Ball. He was the recipient of many awards and has had much success in Australian national competitions. Since moving to London, he has received a Managing Director’s Award in the Jaques Samuel Intercollegiate Competition and notably, was awarded the ‘Coutts & Co Award for Keyboard’ as winner of the Royal Over-Seas League Keyboard Final. Michael has been invited to give recitals in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, St Martin-in-the-Fields, in Bristol and at the Edinburgh Fringe.
Chris Brannick (lead percussionist) is a founder member of the internationally renowned percussion group ensemblebash. His compositions and arrangements feature on CDs, websites, documentaries, Children’s BBC and music festivals and he has been music advisor to Legoland. He plays cimbalom, percussion, steel pan, drum kit, guitar, bass guitar, bugle, piano and he sings in a stupidly high voice. He’s been a Professor at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, a Percussion Clinician at the Royal College of Music and a tutor at the Junior Department of the same college, and also finds time to be the Head of Instrumental Music for the London Borough of Newham. He’s an actor, with credits running from Mole in Wind In The Willows to The Journalist in Making History. His other music groups include FourSight, a quartet mixing electronic and classical music, Classic Rhythm, a bravura trio with a sense of musical adventure and his cabaret bands, The Favoured Few and The Brannick Academy.
The Various Voices’ Festival Chorus is a massed choir of visiting delegate singers from around the world. The choir, representing over 14 different countries, has formed and rehearsed the programme from scratch during the Various Voices festival – some three days!
Voicelab: Southbank Centre’s Voicelab provides training and performance opportunities for its participants across a wide range of vocal styles from classical music to beatboxing. Voicelab is directed by Mary King and funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation.
Mary King has a varied career as a singer: leading roles in stage productions cover everything from Caryl Churchill’s The Skriker through to The Marriage of Figaro and Wonderful Town, and recent concert work has included appearances with the Cleveland Orchestra, the Schoenberg Ensemble, the Berlin Philharmonic and the London Sinfonietta. After a long collaboration with English National Opera, she came to Southbank Centre in 2006 as an Artist in Residence and to set up a new vocal project called Voicelab. Mary was a judge and voice coach on Channel 4’s acclaimed series Operatunity and Musicality and continues to be a regular contributor to TV and radio. Recent publications include The Singers’ Handbook, co-written with Tony Legge for Faber, and two volumes of what is to be a series of vocal coaching books for Boosey and Hawkes. She is also Head of Singing at Millennium Performing Arts.
Nicole Tibbels (Soprano) was awarded a scholarship to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, having first obtained an honours degree in French at Sheffield University. Roles at the Royal Opera House the Countess in Massenet’s Chérubin; L’Amour and La Folie in Rameau’s Platée, Fido in Britten’s Paul Bunyan, and Clorinda in Rossini’s La Cenerentola. Whilst a member of the Swingle Singers she met Luciano Berio, whose music was her introduction to the contemporary repertoire. Since then she has worked extensively in this field, performing Berio’s Sinfonia throughout the world, and Laborintus, A Ronne and Folk Songs as far afield as St Petersburg, New York and Tel Aviv. Her extensive contemporary repertoire includes Mr Emmet Takes a Walk, by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Ligeti’s Aventures and Nouvelles Aventures, Schoenberg’s String Quartet no.2 Songs of Innocence by Aaron J Kernis; Eliot Carter’s A Mirror on which to Dwell and recitals of Hindemith, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Villa-Lobos, Schubert and Ravel. She sang and danced Stravinsky songs with The Rambert Dance Company for several seasons, and performed Nenia – The death of Orpheus (Orpheus Singing and Dreaming) with the Richard Alston Dance Company and the London Sinfonietta. Nicole has also made a great many recordings for television and radio plays, films, television series and commercials, from the computer game The Darkening, to title music for Wish You Were Here and The Fruit Machine. She has made numerous commercial recordings for television and the cinema and, by popular demand she recorded a single of the music for St Ivel Gold which entered the pop music charts.
Nigel Robson (Tenor) is one of Britain’s most versatile lyric tenors with a wide-ranging operatic and concert repertoire. Roles include Bajazet/Tamerlano, title role/Peter Grimes, Captain Vere/Billy Budd, Laça/Jenufa, title role/Idomeneo, Male Chorus/The Rape of Lucretia, Pandarus/Troilus and Cressida, The Madwoman/Curlew River and Septimus/Theodora. He has appeared in concert across Europe with many leading orchestras and has recorded widely for Phillips Classics, Sony Classics, Deutsche Grammophon Archiv, Chandos and Virgin Classics. Recent appearances include Maderna’s Satyricon in Rome and L’Aquila, Britten’s Serenade with Michael Zilm and the Orquestra Metropolitana de Lisboa, Younghi Pagh-Paan’s Mondschatten for Stuttgart Opera, Opera North’s Peter Grimes, The Witch/Hansel & Gretel for the Nationale Reisopera, Aschenbach/Death in Venice for Frankfurt Opera and Iro/Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria for Nederlandse Opera. Nigel Robson premiered The Tenor Man’s Story, a project close to his own life, at the 2005 Enschede Festival in Holland. It takes the form of a multimedia recital with integrated audio and visual projections using the works of Britten, Dufay, Cage and the Beatles, as well as piano improvisations by Howard Moody and audio compositions of his own.
Mark Holland (Baritone) Mark Holland is one of Britain’s most distinguished baritones. He made his major European debut creating the title role in Luca Lombardi’s Faust in Basel. He has sung at the Bregenz Festival, the Royal Festival Hall, the Royal Albert Hall and at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw. Other opera engagements include Lescaut Lescaut/Manon Lescaut at Glyndebourne, Amonasro/Aida with Nationale Reisopera in Enschede, and his debut in Rigoletto with English National Opera and the Komische Oper Berlin. For the Hamburgische Staatsoper he has sung Renato/Un Ballo in Maschera and has performed Don Pizarro/Fidelio for the Deutsche Oper Berlin. Past and future engagements include Ein Deutsches Requiem, Elijah broadcast by the BBC, The Bassarids at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Die Jakobiner in Cologne, Otello at WNO, Carmina Burana for Raymond Gubbay and Le Roi/Yvonne, Princess de Bourgogne by Boesmans at Opéra National de Paris.
Delegates only: If you want to perform see our Focus on “With one voice” for more information. You need to register as a delegate if you haven’t already done so and add “With One Voice” to the list of choirs on your registration form.
