Artists 2018
Iain Burnside
Iain Burnside is a pianist who has appeared in recital with many of the world’s leading singers (“pretty much ideal” BBC Music Magazine). He is also an insightful programmer with an instinct for the telling juxtaposition.
His recordings straddle an exuberantly eclectic repertoire ranging from Beethoven and Schubert to the cutting edge, as in the Gramophone Award-winning NMC Songbook. Recent recordings include the complete Rachmaninov songs (Delphian) with seven outstanding Russian artists (“the results are electrifying” Daily Telegraph).
Burnside’s passion for English Song is reflected in acclaimed CDs of Britten, Finzi, Ireland, Butterworth and Vaughan Williams, many with baritone Roderick Williams.
Away from the piano Burnside is active as a writer and broadcaster. As presenter of BBC R3’s Voices he won a Sony Radio Award. For Guildhall School of Music & Drama Burnside has devised a number of singular theatre pieces. A Soldier and a Maker, based on the life of Ivor Gurney, was performed at the Barbican Centre and the Cheltenham Festival, and later broadcast by BBC R3 on Armistice Day. His new project Swansong has been premiered at the Kilkenny Festival and will play in Milton Court in November.
Future highlights include performances of the three Schubert song cycles with Roderick Williams at Wigmore Hall. A Delphian release of songs by Nikolai Medtner launches a major series of Russian Song in the 2018 Wigmore Hall season. Other forthcoming projects feature Ailish Tynan, Rosa Feola, Andrew Watts, Robin Tritschler and Benjamin Appl.
Iain Burnside is Artistic Director of the Ludlow English Song Weekend and Artistic Consultant to Grange Park Opera.
Adam Walker
At the forefront of a new generation of wind soloists, Adam Walker was appointed principal flute of the London Symphony Orchestra in 2009 at the age of 21 and received the Outstanding Young Artist Award at MIDEM Classique in Cannes. In 2010 he won a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship Award and was shortlisted for the Royal Philharmonic Society Outstanding Young Artist Award.
An ambassador for the flute with a ferocious appetite for repertoire, Adam’s interests range from the less well-known French Baroque through to newly commissioned works.
As a soloist he performs with the major UK orchestras including BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Hallé, Bournemouth Symphony, City of Birmingham Symphony and is a regular visitor to the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. Further afield he has performed with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Seattle Symphony, Seoul Philharmonic, Auckland Philharmonia, Malaysian Philharmonic, Malmö Symphony Orchestra, Vienna Chamber Orchestra, Solistes Européens, Luxembourg and the RTE National Symphony Orchestra. A committed chamber musician with a curious and creative approach to repertoire and programming, Adam was recently selected to join the prestigious Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s “CMS Two” programme for the 2018 –2021 seasons. Recital highlights over recent seasons have included LSO St. Luke’s, De Singel, Musée du Louvre, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festspiele and the Delft, West Cork, Utrecht and Moritzburg Chamber Music Festivals. Adam is also a regular visitor to the Wigmore Hall, where his regular partners include James Baillieu, Mahan Esfahani, CédricTiberghien and Morgan Szymanski.
Aidan Thomson
Aidan Thomson is Senior Lecturer in Music at the National University of Ireland, Galway. His research is concerned with British and Irish music and its cultural context, particularly its reception and issues of national identity, during the first half of the twentieth century. He has worked extensively on the music of Edward Elgar; more recent work has focused on Ethel Smyth, Arnold Bax and Ralph Vaughan Williams. With Alain Frogley, he co-edited The Cambridge Companion to Vaughan Williams (2013). He wrote and presented a radio programme, ‘Bax, Ireland and 1916’, for RTÉ Lyric fm’s ‘The Lyric Feature’ series to coincide with the Irish premiere of Bax’s commemoration of the Easter Rising, In Memoriam, and also gave a public lecture on this work as part of RTÉ’s ‘Reflecting the Rising’ event in Dublin on Easter Monday 2016. He is a member of the Council of the Society for Musicology in Ireland.
Ailish Tynan
Ailish Tynan trained at Trinity College, the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London. She was a Vilar Young Artist at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden and a BBC New Generation Artist. In 2003, representing Ireland, Ailish won the Rosenblatt Recital Prize at BBC Cardiff Singer of the World.
Her operatic career has seen her performing internationally in repertoire including Gretel Hänsel und Gretel, Podtotshina’s Daughter The Nose, Papagena Die Zauberflöte, Sophie Der Rosenkavalier, Héro Béatrice et Bénédict and Vixen The Cunning Little Vixen.
Among her notable concert appearances are Mahler Symphony No.8 (Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia, Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia and Dresdner Philharmonie); Mahler Symphony No.4 (Prague Symphony Orchestra and the Hallé) and Mahler Symphony No. 2 (Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra); Verdi Requiem (Ludwigsburger Schlossfestspiele); Handel Messiah (Academy of Ancient Music); Haydn The Creation (City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra) and Vaughan Williams Hodie (Royal Concertgebouw, Amsterdam).
In recital Ailish works regularly with pianists including Iain Burnside, James Baillieu, Graham Johnson, Christopher Glynn and Joseph Middleton at venues and festivals including Wigmore Hall, Edinburgh, City of London, Gregynog, St. Magnus, Brighton and West Cork Music Festivals, and at the Vinterfespill in Norway. Recent recordings include Fauré Melodies (Opus Arte) and Nacht und Träume (Delphian), both with the pianist Iain Burnside.
In the current season Ailish performs Glière’s Concerto for Coloratura Soprano with the Philharmonia, conducted by Vladimir Askenazy, Vaughan William’s Dona nobis pacem with the Britten Sinfonia, and makes her Swedish recital debut at the Konserthuset Stockholm, with Magnus Svensson.
Ann Murray
Ann Murray was born in Dublin. She has close links with both the English National Opera, for whom she has sung the title roles in Handel Xerxes and Ariodante and Donizetti Maria Stuarda, and with the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, where her roles have included Cherubino, Dorabella, Donna Elvira, Rosina, Octavian, new productions of L’Enfant et les Sortilèges, Ariadne auf Naxos, Idomeneo, Mitridate, Re di Ponto, Cosi fan Tutte, Mosé in Egitto, Alcina and Giulio Cesare.
Her international operatic engagements have taken her to Hamburg, Dresden, Cologne, Berlin, Munich, Paris, Zurich, Brussels, Amsterdam, Milan, Vienna, Salzburg, the Chicago Lyric Opera, Los Angeles Opera and the Metropolitan Opera, New York.
In concert, she has appeared with the world’s great orchestras and her recital appearances have taken her to Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Geneva, Dresden, Zurich, Frankfurt, Madrid, London, Dublin, the Aldeburgh, Edinburgh, Munich and Salzburg Festivals and both the Konzerthaus and Musikverein in Vienna. Her discography reflects not only her broad concert and recital repertoire but also many of her great operatic roles.
In 1997 Ann Murray was made an Honorary Doctor of Music by the National University of Ireland, in 1998 she was made a Kammersängerin of the Bavarian State Opera and in 1999 an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music. In the 2002 Golden Jubilee Queen’s Birthday Honours she was appointed an honorary Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. In 2004 she was awarded the Bavarian Order of Merit.
The Carice Singers
The Carice Singers is a unique vocal ensemble of young professional singers, described as possessing a “beauty of tone” and “musicality” that “few can match” (Gramophone Magazine, 2016). Since its founding in 2011, the choir has performed at many festivals and venues throughout the British Isles and in Germany, and has recorded a trio of CDs for the Naxos label.
Named after Elgar’s daughter, the ensemble is led by its Founder and Conductor George Parris in its commitment to bringing a pure sound and an imaginative approach to a wide spectrum of choral music, with a particular passion for educating people of all ages about the themes and contexts behind the music.
The Carice Singers’ three discs with Naxos (featuring music by Peter Warlock, John Ireland, E.J. Moeran, Frederick Delius, and Arnold Bax) have been highly praised for their “captivating interpretations” (Choir & Organ Magazine) and “beautifully blended tone” (The Guardian).
2018 began with a new recording of Hubert Parry’s Songs of Farewell and a selection of his other part-songs for the BBC Music Magazine (to be released in Autumn 2018), and will continue with concerts at Cheltenham Festival, Pinner Music Festival, and St James’ Church in Chipping Campden.
Carolyn Dobbin
Northern Irish mezzo-soprano, Carolyn Dobbin and Samling Scholar, began her career as a teacher of Art and Design before commencing the Opera course at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama.
She has performed at the English National Opera, Grange Park Opera, Opera Holland Park, Stadt Theatre Bern, English Touring Opera, the Royal Albert Hall and Royal Opera House Linbury Studio.
Carolyn has performed extensively in opera, oratorio and in solo recitals. She was Associate Artist at Welsh National Opera in 2010 and spent two years at Luzern Opera House in 2012-2014.
Future performances include a recording of a CD of a newly discovered opera with Richard Bonynge. She will also tour the UK with the role of Madam Popova in The Bear and sing the role of Mary in Der Fliegende Holländer for Longborough Festival.
She has a keen interest in songs by Northern Irish composers which she has been collecting for years, and as a result will release a series of CDs with Iain Burnside and Delphian Records with these songs, plus newly written song cycles by current Northern Irish composers.
Gareth Brynmor John
Winner of the Kathleen Ferrier Award, baritone Gareth Brynmor John studied at St John’s College, Cambridge and the Royal Academy of Music where, in his final year, he won the Royal Academy of Music Patrons’ Award. He recently studied at the National Opera Studio where he was supported by the Royal Opera House, Richard Carne Trust and Chris Ball. He made his debut with Welsh National Opera singing Schaunard (La Bohème) in Spring 2017 and returns in 2017/18 to cover the title role in Eugene Onegin.
Recent engagements include Sharpless (Madama Butterfly) for Bury Court Opera and at the Anghiari Festival in Tuscany, and Pallante (Agrippina) for Iford Arts Opera. With English Touring Opera, he sang Edoardo in Donizetti’s The Siege of Calais, and also understudied Marcello (La bohème). He has understudied Silvio (I Pagliacci), Cecil (Maria Stuarda), Roderick (Usher House) and Man/Ephraimite (Moses und Aron) for Welsh National Opera.
Gareth has also performed extensively on the concert platform with a number of the UK’s leading orchestras and ensembles including The Philharmonia, the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and the London Mozart Players.
Gareth is part of the Songsmiths, and regularly sings in the London English Song Festival. He has also given recitals at St John’s Smith Square, Wigmore Hall, Barber Institute, King’s Place, King’s Lynn Festival, North Norfolk Music Festival, Haddo Festival, Buxton Festival and Leeds Lieder. His recording of Mahler Lieder eines fahrenden gesellen with Trevor Pinnock was recently released by Linn Records.
Gavan Ring
Gavan Ring read Education and Music at St Patrick’s College, Dublin and after post-graduate studies at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, trained at the National Opera Studio in London.
Gavan Ring read Education and Music at St Patrick’s College, Dublin and after post-graduate studies at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, trained at the National Opera Studio in London. He was a Jerwood Young Artist at the 2012 Glyndebourne Festival Opera, second prize winner at the 2013 Wigmore Hall International Song competition and won the Southbank Sinfonia Award for Orchestral Song.
Opera plans this season and beyond include his debut with Welsh National Opera as Don Giovanni; Horatio Hamlet by Brett Dean and Figaro Il barbiere di Siviglia for Glyndebourne Touring Opera; Dancaïre Carmen on tour in France and Spain with Ensemble Matheus; Olivier Capriccio for Garsington Opera; and a return to Opera North to sing Papageno Die Zauberflöte. He will also appear as the High King of Ireland in Opera Theatre Company’s production of Eithne by Robert O’Dwyer, the first performance of this opera for over one hundred years.
Recent concerts include Britten War Requiem in Belfast Cathedral with the Ulster Orchestra; Bach St John Passion with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra; Handel Messiah with RTÉ NSO and a solo recital for Opera Northern Ireland’s Festival of Voice. Future concert plans include a solo recital with at London’s Wigmore Hall.
Other roles have included Schaunard La Bohème, Manuel in Falla La Vida Breve, Jake Wallace La Fanciulla del West, Figaro Il barbiere di Siviglia, Guglielmo Così fan Tutte, Ping Turandot and Novice’s Friend Billy Budd for Opera North; Nardo La Finta Giardinera, Morales Carmen and Phoebus in Purcell Fairy Queen for Glyndebourne Festival Opera; Pluto in Offenbach Orpheus in the Underworld for Scottish Opera; Bill Bobstay in HMS Pinafore at the Edinburgh International Festival; and Falke Die Fledermaus for Holland Park Opera.
Gavan is kindly supported by An Chomhairle Ealaíon/The Arts Council of Ireland.
George Parris
George Parris is a British singer and conductor, currently studying for Master’s Degree in Choral Conducting at the Sibelius Academy, Helsinki. He read Music at both Cambridge and Oxford universities, where he also sang as a Choral Scholar and then as a Lay Clerk with the choirs of Sidney Sussex College (Cambridge), The Queen’s College (Oxford), and Magdalen College (Oxford). Parris has received a Certificate of Merit from the Elgar Society and commendation from other Societies for his commitment to the performance and research of British music. He is becoming known for his fresh interpretations and unique approach to choral music.
Gildas Quartet
The Gildas Quartet has performed to critical acclaim across the UK and Europe at major venues including the Purcell Room, Bridgewater Hall, Wigmore Hall, and live on BBC Radio 3. Praised for their ‘refreshing approach’ and ‘exciting precision’, they are fast establishing themselves as one of the most exciting young ensembles to emerge in recent years.
Passionate exponents of a diverse and varied repertoire, the Gildas have had the privilege of working with composers including Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Colin Matthews and Howard Skempton, performing their works at London’s Southbank Centre, Kings Place and The Forge. They have recently given recitals at international festivals such as the Two Moors Festival, Oxford Lieder Festival, and the Cheltenham Festival, and they were invited to teach and perform at Dartington Summer Music. With generous support from the Britten Pears Foundation, the quartet is delighted to have been able to commission a new quartet from Philip Cashian. They were invited to give its première performance in 2017 at the St Magnus Festival, Orkney. The quartet have recently completed a debut recording of two works by Cheryl Frances-Hoad to be included in a disc of the composer’s music for the Champs Hill label, released in 2018.
The Gildas Quartet are City Music Foundation Artists and have recently finished their tenure as Junior Fellows at the Birmingham Conservatoire. They have frequently been featured by the Park Lane Group Young Artists scheme and are grateful for awards and support from the Tunnell Trust, the Richard Carne Trust and the Royal Northern College of Music. In larger chamber music collaborations, the Gildas Quartet has joined musicians such as Alexander Baillie, Robin Tritschler and Matthew Barley. Ongoing partnerships include quintets with clarinettist Jack McNeill, soprano Raphaela Papadakis and pianist Sholto Kynoch, in addition to a number of exciting projects with the New English Ballet Theatre. The quartet are delighted to have been selected as Making Music Featured Artists for 2017/18.
Helen Grime
Helen Grime (b.1981) studied at the Royal College of Music with Julian Anderson and Edwin Roxburgh (composition) and John Anderson (oboe). She came to public attention in 2003, when her Oboe Concerto won a British Composer Award. In 2008 she was awarded a Leonard Bernstein Fellowship to attend the Tanglewood Music Center where she studied with John Harbison, Michael Gandolfi, Shulamit Ran and Augusta Read Thomas. Grime was Associate Composer to the Hallé Orchestra between 2011 and 2015, a fruitful period resulting in a series of new works and a recording of her orchestral music on NMC Recordings. In 2016 her Two Eardley Pictures were premiered at the BBC Proms and in Glasgow, winning the prize for large-scale composition in the Scottish Awards for New Music and a nomination in the British Composer Awards the following year. Grime is Composer in Residence at the Wigmore Hall for the 16/17 and 17/18 seasons. Highlights of this period include the premieres of a Piano Concerto for Huw Watkins and Birmingham Contemporary Music Group conducted by Oliver Knussen and a song cycle Bright Travellers for soprano Ruby Hughes and Joseph Middleton. In 2017 she was commissioned by the Barbican to write a two-part work for Sir Simon Rattle’s inaugural season as Music Director of the London Symphony Orchestra, with the first instalment, Fanfares, opening its 17/18 season.
James Risdon
James Risdon is a recorder player based in London. He learns much of his repertoire from Braille music. During nine years working for the RNIB Music Advisory Service he supported numerous blind musicians, from beginners to professionals, to use this most genius and enduring code.
As a recorder player, James enjoys a varied musical existence reflecting his eclectic tastes and repertoire that span the Middle Ages to “wet on the page”. His debut album of music for solo recorder entitled Echoes of Arcadia plots the recorder’s history from the pleasure garden to the jungle, ethereal to electronic.
His work with the Great British Paraorchestra under its founder and Musical Director Charles Hazlewood has seen him perform at venues including the Symphony Hall, Birmingham, the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, The Bristol Planetarium, at a TED Talk in Brussels and at the 2012 Paralympic closing ceremony with Coldplay. More unusual engagements have included Noyes Fludde at the Bath & West showground and appearances on a pod on the London Eye, a tin hut, an eco hub, several barns and a performance for the Japanese government in Soporo.
James studied with Alan Davis in Birmingham and latterly Rebecca Miles in London, gaining his LRSM with distinction. In 2011 he was runner-up in a worldwide competition for blind musicians at the Jan Dale Conservatoire in Prague.
In 1996 James was a member of the Great Britain goalball team at the Paralympic Games in Atlanta. In 2003 He gained a Master’s in German translation from Leeds University. From 2008 to 2017, James worked in the Music Advisory Service at the RNIB supporting blind and partially sighted musicians.
Please visit www.jamesrisdon.co.uk for further details.
John Gilhooly
Irish born John Gilhooly became Director of Wigmore Hall in 2005, making him, then, the youngest leader of any of the world’s great concert halls. He had been Executive Director of Wigmore Hall since December 2000 and has overseen the artistic, financial and administrative transformation of the Hall over the past 16 years. His tenure has produced record box office returns and the Hall’s highest ever membership levels and annual fundraising. As Artistic Director of Wigmore Hall, he programmes the largest chamber music and song series in the world, and he is noted for his commitment to outstanding emerging artists, diversity and contemporary music. John Gilhooly has been honoured by heads of state and academic institutions. In 2013 he was awarded an OBE by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and in 2015 was made a Knight of the Order of the White Rose of Finland by the President of Finland. John has also received the prestigious Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, and the Order of the Star of Italy (Cavaliere), awarded by the President of Italy. In 2016 he was awarded the German Order of Merit, which is Germany’s highest civilian honour. He is a recipient of Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Music (2006), Honorary Membership of the Royal College of Music (2012), Honorary Fellowship of the Guildhall School (2015), and Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Irish Academy of Music (2016).
Katy Hamilton
Dr. Katy Hamilton is a freelance researcher, writer and presenter on music. Her area of specialism is the music of Johannes Brahms and his contemporaries, and she has also been involved in projects covering subjects as diverse as the history of the Edinburgh Festival, the role of émigré musicians in post-1945 British musical life, and variety shows at the Wigmore Hall in the early twentieth century. She has provided concert introductions and programme notes for a host of venues including the Edinburgh International Festival, Victoria & Albert Museum, BBC Proms, Wigmore Hall, and St George’s, Bristol as well as making vital contributions to the Oxford Lieder Festival and the Ludlow English Song Weekend.
Katy has taught at the Royal College of Music, the University of Nottingham, Middlesex University and City Lit, and has published and assisted on several projects including the recent book Brahms in the Home and the Concert Hall Cambridge University Press). She has also made several appearances on BBC Radio 3, as a Brahms specialist and as part of the Record Review team.
Lorraine Byrne Bodley
Lorraine Byrne Bodley is Senior Lecturer in Musicology and Director of Research and International Studies at Maynooth University. She has published 13 books including: Goethe and Zelter: Musical Dialogues (2009); The Unknown Schubert (2007) and Schubert’s Goethe Settings (2003). Recent publications include Schubert’s Late Music: History, Theory, Style (Cambridge University Press, 2016); Rethinking Schubert (Oxford University Press, 2016), both co-edited with Julian Horton, and a special Schubert edition of Nineteenth Century Music Review published by Cambridge and co-edited with James Sobaskie. She is currently writing a new biography, Schubert. A Musical Wayfarer, commissioned by Yale University Press. Recent awards include a DMUS in Musicology, a higher doctorate on published work (NUI, 2012); two DAAD Senior Academic Awards (2010 and 2014) and a Gerda-Henkel Foundation Scholarship (2014). In 2015 she was elected President of the Society for Musicology in Ireland and Member of The Royal Irish Academy.
Linda O’Shea Farren
Linda graduated in law from University College Cork, and is qualified to practise as a Solicitor both in Ireland and England & Wales, and as an Attorney-at-Law in the state of New York and the US Supreme Court. She is also a CEDR-accredited Mediator. She is currently pursuing a MEconSc in Policy Analysis part-time.
Linda practised as a corporate lawyer with Debevoise & Plimpton in New York and London from the mid-1980s to mid-1990s. Since returning to Ireland, she has worked in the public, private and voluntary sectors across a broad spectrum of law, banking, government, politics, education, health, disability, refugee services and the arts. After a period working as an investment banker at Kredietbank in Dublin, Linda is now Communications & Projects Manager at the Contemporary Music Centre, Ireland.
Linda founded Music Education Action Group to promote peripatetic instrumental music education in primary schools, and was an early instigator of the BA in Composition degree at RIAM. In addition to being a Board Member of Great Music in Irish Houses, Linda’s Board experience includes Independent Non-Executive Director of EBS (after the banking crisis); Board Member of HIQA; Governor of University College Cork, and Chair of its Audit Committee; Senator of the National University of Ireland, and Chair of its Audit & Risk Committee; and Board Member of Mary Immaculate College Foundation.
Michael Foyle
Michael was born in Ayrshire in 1991 and first appeared as soloist with orchestra in Edinburgh Festival Theatre aged eight. He went on to win the BBC Young Musician of the Year Tabor Award 2008 and was the 2009 Leader of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, performing at the BBC Proms in the Royal Albert Hall and as their representative soloist in Houses of Parliament. In 2013 Michael won the Royal Overseas League String Competition, Croydon Concerto Competition and Eastbourne Young Soloist Competition. In 2014-15 Michael performs the concerti of Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Lalo, Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky across the UK, as well as appearing as soloist with the Youth Symphony Orchestra of Russia in the Great Hall of Moscow Conservatory and the International House of Music, Moscow. Other solo appearances this season include in Austria, France, Germany, The Netherlands and Spain. As Leverhulme Trust Postgraduate Scholar at the Royal Academy of Music, Michael was awarded the Regency and Faulkener Awards and, upon graduating in July 2015, the Roth Prize for the highest violin mark of the year. During his Masters he won the Philharmonia/MMSF Hurwitz and Meyer Awards, Help Musicians UK Parikian Award, Countess of Munster Trust Award, St. James Caird Scholarship Wiseman Prize and Helen Worswick Scholarship. Alongside his studies with Maureen Smith and Daniel Rowland, he completed an Erasmus exchange at the University of the Arts in Vienna and currently receives masterclasses from artists such as Olivier Charlier, Maxim Vengerov and Pavel Vernikov.
Michael House
Michael House is an American filmmaker and composer who presently resides in Brussels. Since 2008, his films have been broadcast in more than a dozen countries including SkyArts in the U.K. and Germany, PBS in America, YLE Finland & SBS Australia. His films have also been shown at film festivals such as the Telluride International Film Festival, Montréal’s FIFAs Film Festival and the London BFI International LGBT Film Festival. In 2013, House’s film Revealing Mr. Maugham was chosen by Monocle Magazine as one of the five must-see films of the year.
Michael House worked closely with the RNIB in London making Braille Music. Filming took place between 2014 and 2016 in the U.K. and in France. ‘Being a musician and a composer myself, I wanted to make a film which championed musical literacy. I also wanted to work with some top notch musicians. This project was really not so much about blindness but about musicianship. The film shows step by step how a piece of music goes from the head of a composer to the final studio mix. Of course the people in the film who demonstrate this creative process are all blind, which is important, but not as important as their musical abilities. For me Braille Music is a music documentary much more than a film about blind people.’ – quote from 2017 interview.
Currently Michael House is writing his second fiction film script and writing music on his classical guitar.
Filmography | Braille Music (2017); I Remember Herb Caen (2015); Fred Lyon: Living Through the Lens (2013); Revealing Mr. Maugham (2012); Meeting Shakespeare (2012); The Magnificent Tati (2009); Eugène and Berenice – Pioneers of Urban Photography (2008).
Nicholas Daniel
Nicholas Daniel has long been acknowledged as one of the world’s great oboe players, and is one of Britain’s best known musicians. He records and broadcasts widely, including regular recordings on the Harmonia Mundi Label, and he boasts a huge following internationally on social media.
He has been Music Director of the Leicester International Music Festival and lunchtime series for many years and is highly sought after as a teacher, being Professor at the Trossingen Musikhochschule in Germany and at the Guildhall School of Music in London.
Following his BBC Proms conducting debut in 2004, he works with many fine ensembles in wide-ranging repertoire ranging from Baroque to contemporary, and from small groups to opera. He is Music Director of Triorca, an orchestral project which brings together talented young musicians from Serbia, Germany and the UK. In recognition of his achievements he was honoured in 2012 with the prestigious Queen’s Medal for Music.
He has been a concerto soloist with many of the world’s leading orchestras and conductors, performing a huge range of repertoire from Bach to Xenakis and beyond, premiering works written for him by composers including Harrison Birtwistle, Henri Dutilleux, James MacMillan, Thea Musgrave, John Tavener and Michael Tippett, as well as encouraging many younger composers to write for the oboe. His recording of concertos by Vaughan Williams and MacMillan was awarded the BBC Music Magazine Premiere Award in 2016.
As chamber musician Nicholas is a founder member of the award-winning Britten Sinfonia, the Haffner Wind Ensemble and the Britten Oboe Quartet. He also works regularly with the pianists Charles Owen and Julius Drake, and with many leading string quartets including the Carducci and Vogler. He is principal oboist of Camerata Pacifica, California’s leading chamber music ensemble.
Nicholas Daniel is proud to play the world’s first ‘fair-trade’ oboe, certified by the Forest Stewardship Council and made especially for him by Marigaux in Paris.
Philip Hammond
Dr. Philip Hammond has pursued an encompassing musical career in teaching, performing, writing and composition. He retired as a Director of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland in 2009 after twenty years which included two years designing, programming and managing an international arts festival in Washington DC complementing Northern Ireland’s presence at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in 2007. In retirement, he has often been engaged as a presenter and correspondent by the BBC and RTÉ and he has written critiques for the Belfast Telegraph and various websites. He is now well known locally as a composer and a respected arts journalist. His large choral work “Requiem for the Lost Souls of the Titanic” was performed in April 2012 and a new piano concerto commissioned by BBC Radio 3 was written for Irish pianist Michael McHale and premiered by the Ulster Orchestra in January 2015. It was given a repeat performance by the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland in Dublin three weeks later in a concert totally devoted to his music. Naxos Records under its Grand Piano Label has released a second CD of his piano music, entitled Miniatures and Modulations, once again featuring Michael McHale as the pianist who also recorded the piano concerto for the RTÉ Lyric FM label with the young Belfast-born conductor Courtney Lewis. The CD was launched in Dublin in September 2016. He has written several “song cycles” for Sarah Walker and Roger Vignoles, Rachel Kelly and Una Hunt, Robin Tritschler and Christopher Glynn, and most recently for mezzo soprano Carolyn Dobbin for her upcoming Irish Song CD project with Iain Burnside on Delphian Records.
Robin Tritschler
Acclaimed for his “radiantly lyrical” voice, Irish tenor Robin Tritschler was a BBC New Generation Artist and appears in concert at the BBC Proms, and with the London Philharmonic, Rotterdam Philharmonic and Hong Kong Philharmonic orchestras, with Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Edo de Waart, Vladimir Jurowski, Yutaka Sado, Philippe Herreweghe, Kirill Karabits, Nathalie Stutzmann and Sir Mark Elder. He performed Messiah before Pope Benedict XVI to celebrate the 80th Anniversary of the Vatican State. A renowned recitalist, Robin performs regularly at the Wigmore Hall and performed the opening recital of their 2017/18 season.
For Welsh National Opera he sang Count Almaviva Il barbiere di Siviglia, Nemorino L’elisir d’amore, Narraboth Salome, Ferrando Così fan tutte, Don Ottavio Don Giovanni and Belmonte Die Entführung aus dem Serail. He also performed for the Royal Opera Covent Garden La monnaie Brussels and Teatro Colon Buenos Aires. Contemporary opera includes John Cage’s Europeras 1 & 2 and Louis Andriessen’s De Materie with the RuhrTriennale Festival.
His growing discography includes critically acclaimed recordings of World War One songs (Signum) with Malcolm Martineau, Songs by Robert Franz with Graham Johnson (Hyperion), and a Britten and Schubert disc with Iain Burnside as part of the Wigmore Hall Live series.
Robin’s recent highlights include appearances with the Bayerische Rundfunk, Pygmalion (Raphael Pichon), NDR Hannover, and London Philharmonic Orchestra, and he made his debut with the Teatro Colon, Buenos Aires. Forthcoming engagements include the B minor Mass with the Royal Concertgebouworkest, St John Passion in Dresden and Salzburg with Herreweghe, Bach cantatas with Pygmalion, Scwhanengesang in San Diego with Inon Barnatan, and a return to the Risor Chamber Music Festival.
Sorcha Cusack
Sorcha Cusack was born into an acting family in Co Dublin, Ireland in 1949. After reading English and French at Trinity College and doing a fair amount of playacting on the side, she started her professional career with Michael MacLiammoir’s company at the Gate Theatre, playing Juliet. She moved to London in 1978 to play Jane Eyre in a 5-part serial for the BBC.
In a career spanning half a century she has worked extensively in theatre, television, film and radio. Highlights have included The Three Sisters at the Royal Court with sisters, Sinead and Niamh as well as her father, Cyril; Frank McGuinness’ Baglady which won a Fringe first at the Edinburgh Festival and playing mother to Brad Pitt on film in Snatch and to Chewitel Ejiofor on stage in Peer Gynt at the Royal National Theatre.
She has recently filmed the sixth BBC series of Father Brown, based on GK Chesterton’s short stories.