Soprano Roberta Philip on cat-walking for London Fashion Week, learning from models, and her upcoming recital at the London Festival of American Music

Roberta Philip [Photo: Ben Reason]

Soprano Roberta Philip is a versatile performer working across opera and jazz idioms in settings ranging from the cat walk to the concert platform. She is passionate about bringing lesser-known works by African American composers into the spotlight and has been praised for her "powerfully expressive" (The Opera Critic) and "outstanding voice" (The Stage).

Roberta performs with pianist Valentina Wang at the London Festival of American Music at The Warehouse on 11 November 2026.

What inspired you to become an Opera singer?

I grew up in a naturally musical family. My family would often burst into song at home, and my Nana, who is now 99, is infamous for having a hymn for every situation - big or small. My parents didn’t have the opportunity to learn instruments themselves, so they made sure my siblings and I did. I studied classical piano and violin, but singing initially remained something I did for fun, whether that was singing pop and R&B at home, musical theatre groups or singing in small jazz bands and choirs.

It was actually at the University of Birmingham that I began to see singing as something more. I auditioned for the Birmingham University Singers Chamber Choir, led by Simon Halsey, singing ‘Memory’ from Cats (one of the only remotely “classical” pieces I knew). I was accepted and went on to sing with the choir throughout the year. Through Halsey’s involvement with the BBC Proms Youth Choir, I also found myself singing in the chorus of Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius at my first BBC Proms.

Watching Roderick Williams, one of the soloists, sing with the orchestra at our first Royal Albert Hall rehearsal gave me chills. He was the first Black opera singer I had ever seen, and I remember thinking that this was what I wanted to do. The following year, the chamber choir audition panel encouraged me to take singing lessons, recognising my innate musicality. By the time I graduated, singing had become my principal study.

When I graduated, I began a full-time career in performing arts PR and had private singing lessons, sung with the London Symphony Chorus and used all my annual leave to do summer vocal development programmes.

A few years later, I went on to train at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, where I completed my Master of Performance. My teacher, John Evans, was instrumental in transforming my voice and helping me recognise my versatility across genres as one of my greatest artistic strengths, showing me how it could inform and enrich my classical singing. Although my training has been rooted in classical music, my love of jazz and soul remains a fundamental part of who I am musically, and continues to influence the way that I approach performance.

In 2024 you performed at London Fashion Week. Are there parallels to be drawn between fashion and music?

In 2024, I was selected as one of a handful of Guildhall students to perform in British designer Patrick McDowell’s Orpheus Ball showcase for London Fashion Week. The collection explored the structures of orchestral music through fashion.

I performed Gershwin’s The Man I Love with my colleague Elizabeth Mwale on euphonium. We were the only musicians dressed in the collection, and we walked the catwalk whilst performing; a surprise twist within the show. I’m not a model, so it was a completely new experience, but I loved seeing how fashion and music could work together.

Through this show, I discovered a key parallel between opera and fashion. In opera, costume can be so much more than something you wear, it helps you inhabit a character and draws you into the narrative world. In the showcase, once wearing Patrick’s collection, I observed the very same transformation in the models, and experienced it myself.

You regularly collaborate with Pegasus Opera Company. What impact has this company had on your development as an artist?

Pegasus Opera Company has played a pivotal role in my development. I joined its mentoring programme in 2023–24, and had several opportunities to perform for industry professionals and connect with key organisations.

Pegasus also cast me in my first professional opera production, Ruth by Philip Hagemann, where I played the Narrator and covered the lead role of Orpah. In fact, I ended up performing both my own role and the role I was covering in every performance, which was an extraordinary learning experience and a significant step in my professional development.

My relationship with Pegasus has continued beyond that production, and I regularly perform in concert tours. Alison Buchanan, Artistic Director, has also been a huge mentor to me. What I value particularly is the way Pegasus has helped create opportunities while encouraging a broader and more representative operatic landscape. That connects closely with my own interests as an artist.

Your recital programme for the London Festival of American Music features music by William Grant Still, Gershwin and Florence Price, amongst others. How have you gone about putting this together?

I’m thrilled to be making my London Festival of American Music debut with a programme that explores the extraordinary breadth and evolution of African American music. I want to celebrate the richness of this repertoire, bring lesser-known works into the spotlight, and share the many different stories and musical traditions it encompasses.

One composer I’m particularly excited to feature is Brittney Boykin. I was introduced to her work during my time at Guildhall, where I discovered her song cycle Moments in Sonder, which sets poetry by Maya Angelou, one of my favourite poets. I contacted Brittney over email, and I was incredibly grateful that Guildhall purchased the collection for me to include in my Master of Performance final recital. It’s wonderful to be able to continue sharing this music beyond my studies.

For me, my LFAM programme captures a vast musical landscape; from the soulful roots of spirituals, to music shaped by the civil rights movement and the struggle for equality, to songs of unencumbered joy, intimacy and love. I’m passionate about broadening the classical canon and encouraging audiences to discover composers and works they may not know. This recital is an opportunity to celebrate that diversity, whilst showing that African American music cannot be defined by a single style, period or experience.

Roberta performs with pianist Valentina Wang on 11 Nov 2026, 7.30pm at the London Festival of American Music at The Warehouse, Waterloo.

Florence Price: Night, Hold Fast to Dreams, Travel's End , Sympathy
Brittney Boykin: Moments in Sonder
George Gershwin: 'Summertime' from Porgy and Bess
Undine Smith Moore: I am in Doubt, I Want to Die while you Love Me, Lyric for True Love
​William Grant Still: 'Give me no Body without your Soul' from Blue Steel, Grief
Margaret Bonds: Three Dream Portraits
George Walker: I Got a Letter from Jesus, Ev'ry Time I Feel de Spirit
Moses Hogan: Were you There?
Hall Johnson: Ride on King Jesus

Joshua Weilerstein to be next chief conductor of BBC Philharmonic

Joshua Weilerstein conducting the BBC Philharmonic in Dvorak's New World Symphony in April 2026

Hot on the heels of John Storgårds, (chief conductor of the BBC Philharmonic until September 2028), launching his first season as musical director of Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra [see my article] comes the news of the appointment of Joshua Weilerstein as the BBC Philharmonic's next chief conductor.

Weilerstein is music director of the Orchestre National de Lille, and will conclude his tenure as chief conductor of the Aalborg Symphony Orchestra at the end of the 2027/28 season. His relationship with the BBC Philharmonic has developed through performances in Manchester and at the BBC Proms. His 2025 BBC Proms appearance with the orchestra included clarinet concertos by Copland and Artie Shaw alongside French composer Elsa Barraine’s Second Symphony (which was premiered by the BBC Symphony Orchestra in 1938) and Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances. In April this year he conducted the orchestra in Manchester in a programme that included Duke Ellington’s Harlem, and Soviet Russian composer Nikolai Kapustin’s Fourth Piano Concerto (with Frank Dupree) alongside Dvorak.

Born in 1987 to a musical family, Joshua Weilerstein's father was the founding first violinist of the Cleveland Quartet.  Joshua Weilerstein studied violin and conducting at the New England Conservatory of Music, and his conducting mentors have included Hugh Wolff. Winning the First Prize (and Audience Prize) at the 2009 Malko Competition for Young Conductors in Copenhagen, he became the youngest first prize winner in the history of the competition. He launched the Sticky Notes podcast in 2017.

It demands to be heard: the CBSO return to Coventry Cathedral with Britten's War Requiem for Remembrance Day in advance of a European tour

Coventry Cathedral [Photo: Garry Jones]

The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) is set to return to Coventry Cathedral for a performance of Britten’s War Requiem on Remembrance Day (11 November), also marking 50 years since Britten's death. 

The CBSO gave the world premiere of the War Requiem at the Cathedral in 1962. The work was commissioned to mark the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral, and the reconsecration marked by an arts festival that also included the premiere of Michael Tippett's King Priam, and Bliss's The Beatitudes (which had to be premiered in the Belgrade Theatre because of scheduling problems relating to the opening services and rehearsals for the War Requiem).

For the Remembrance Day performance, the CBSO's music director, Kazuki Yamada conducts the orchestra, CBSO Chorus, CBSO Youth Choir and Trinity Boys Choir with soloists Olga Peretyatko, Andrew Staples, and Christian Gerhaher.

Following the Coventry concert, Kazuki Yamada and the orchestra will give performances of the War Requiem in Brussels, Luxembourg and Lucerne as part of a European tour which includes concerts in Freiburg, Nuremberg, and Viersen (which is near Düsseldorf). Rather strikingly the CBSO Chorus and Trinity Boys Choir also taking part in the performances of the War Requiem on the tour.

CBSO Chief Executive Emma Stenning said: "War Requiem is not a comfortable piece. It is, as Britten intended, a reflection on war and a cry for peace, and in many ways could not be more prescient, or more urgently needed from an orchestra right now. We are not staging it as an act of nostalgia. We are staging it because it demands to be heard."

Full details from the CBSO website.

The songs that make ordinary moments feel transcendent: Erik Sigurd's Sonnet live in Stoke Newington

"There was a time when you could sit in silence without reaching for your phone, when you looked forward to long car rides for the space to think, when you would listen to an album from start to finish. We find the songs that make ordinary moments feel transcendent."

This comes from the manifesto of Silent Songs, an independent record label, publisher and curator. And whilst their name might seem something of a tautology, in fact they focus on contemporary classical and ambient music, and in creating carefully curated live experiences around their artists.

One of these is the British-Swedish composer Erik Sigurd, whose piano music is described at 'soft and cinematic'. Sigurd has his debut album, Sonnet out on 12 November and to celebrate that, Silent Songs has gathered Sigurd and friends together for a concert at the Old church, Soke Newington on 13 November 2026.

In the first half, Sigurd will play his own solo piano music alongside music by key pianistic influences. In the second half he will be joined by string quartet - Eleonora Consta, Roman Lytwyniw, Luba Tunnicliffe, Zachary Owen, saxophonist Kaidi Akinnibi, double bass Sam Becker and harpist Oliver Wass, for Sonnet, Sigurd's 14 movement chamber work.

In fact Erik Sigurd is the pseudonym that jazz and classical composer/pianist Leif Kaner-Lidström uses for recording meditative, often improvised solo works. You can also catch Kaner-Lidström performing with his own quintet, the Levitation Orchestra and the Jess Gillam band.

Further details from dice.

Innovative repertoire, worthy winners & talent development: looking back at the final of BBC Young Musician

BBC Young Musician final, 20206 - Sofia Demetriades [Photo: BBC / Betsan Evans]

It was heartening to hear three such talented young people in the BBC Young Musician 2026 final and to experience such imaginatively varied repertoire. Whilst the winner, violinist Sofia Demetriades played Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto and impressed both audience and judges, recorder player Alma Nunez Debretzeni played Graham Fitkin's Recorder Concerto and saxophonist Kezia Colton played Takashi Yoshimatsu's Cyber Bird Saxophone Concerto. All three accompanied by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, conducted by Alpesh Chauhan at Bristol Beacon.

I was very much taken with Graham Fitkin's Recorder Concerto, a work I did not know before. This was originally commissioned by Debretzeni’s teacher, Barbara Law, and it was given its premiere performance in 2017 by 2014’s Young Musician finalist, Sophie Westbrooke. Japanese composer Takashi Yoshimatsu's influences range from Beethoven and Tchaikovsky through to Pink Floyd, Yes, and Emerson, Lake & Palmer. His concerto for alto saxophone dates from 1993 with a title that refers to 'an imaginary bird in the realm of electronic cyberspace' and it was written for virtuoso saxophonist, Nobuya Sugawa. At Bristol Beacon, the Competition's 2022 winner, the percussionist Jordan Ashman, joined Kezia Colton onstage for Yoshimatsu’s concerto.

BBC Young Musician final, 20206 - Alma Nunez Debretzeni [Photo: BBC / Betsan Evans]

Violinist Sofia Demetriades has already been making waves. In March, she won the senior category of the Haslemere International String Competition with a prize including concerto performance engagement with the English Chamber Orchestra (ECO) at the Haslemere Festival. Continuing the ECO connection, Demetriades will be ECO's inaugural New Horizons Artist Sofia Demetriades. New Horizons is the English Chamber Orchestra’s flagship talent development programme which is being launched next year. The programme will identify exceptional emerging musicians and composers and support them through a sustained two-year pathway from education into professional life.

The BBC Young Musician final 2026 is on BBC iPlayer.

Complexity & beauty: soprano Paula Sides & pianist Sergey Rybin explore songs on the cusp of Modernism & Romanticism in Of Love & Transience

Of Love & Transience: Berg, Ullmann, Korngold, Strauss; Paula Sides, Sergey Rybin; VOCES8 Records
Reviewed 2 November 2026

Viktor Ullmann's settings of Elizabeth Barrett Browning translated by Rilke provide the powerful centrepiece in a recital that explores songs on the cusp of Modernism and Romanticism with performances that mine both the songs complexity and beauty

It's not obvious that the early 20th century would provide such richness in the song repertoire, particularly in the Austro-German tradition. Yet song-writing seems to have constantly drawn composers and exploring those on the cusp of modernism and romanticism can prove richly rewarding.

On this new disc from soprano Paula Sides and pianist Sergey Rybin, Of Love and Transience on the VOCES8 Records, they explore the songs of Alban Berg and Richard Strauss alongside those of Viktor Ullmann and Erich Korngold. The recital is bookended by Berg's Seven Early Songs and Strauss's Four Last Songs, but the lesser-known gems by Ullmann and Korngold prove to be equally rewarding.

Music made with & by people, where they live & work, is what keeps orchestral music alive & relevant: Orchestras Live's 2026 Impact Review

Orchestras Live: Culture Sounds [Photo: Chiara Dellerba]

Orchestras Live is the charity that works to bring the thrill and connection of live orchestral music to people who might not otherwise encounter it, and to use those shared experiences to spark confidence, wellbeing and a sense of belonging in both the individuals and communities. It has recently released its 2026 Impact Report, which makes for illuminating reading.

They work nationally with a focus in the East, North and the Midlands, often in coastal and rural communities where access to high-quality music experiences are often limited. The report covers some 35 projects and events, working with 37 local partners and 19 orchestral partners to create over 26,000 orchestral experiences.

Key projects include:

Our Music Our Way: providing first time experiences for children and young people, helping put music at the heart of communities in Redcar and Cleveland, with young children hearing an orchestra for the first time alongside residents co-writing and performing with professional musicians. 

This involved an ongoing schools programme with Royal Northern Sinfonia, composer Michael Betteridge and teachers from Tees Valley Music Services.

Culture Sounds: trauma-informed creative opportunities for displaced children and young people in the UK care system, deepening understanding of how creative work can support belonging and confidence. 

Musicians from One World Orchestra and Sinfonia Viva delivered workshops at a young people's residence in Leicester, working with local support workers. One World Orchestra has now secured funding to launch a full programme next year.

Good Company: creative dementia support for family carers and their relatives in Essex, helping them stay connected, independent and creatively engaged. Building on this, a new iteration will be delivered in Rayleigh, building on a legacy project established there by Dance Network Association.

Day of Psalms curated by Edmund de Waal at Schwarzman Centre, Oxford culminates in Aurora Orchestra premiering Frideswides Psalms by Nico Muhly

St Frideswide in 14th century stained glass at Christ Church, Oxford [Photo: Wikimedia/Andrew Dunning]

The Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre is the University of Oxford's new centre for the arts and humanities. The Hopkins Architects-designed buildings house seven of the University's humanities faculties whilst the public performance spaces include a concert hall, studio theatre, and black box performance space.

As an example of the sort of cross-cultural fertilisation that we might expect, artist and writer Edmund de Waal is a Schwarzman Centre Cultural Fellow. He was been working with academics on exploring the continuing resonance of the Psalms across the three Abrahamic faiths and beyond. The culmination of this work is a Day of Psalms at the Schwarzman Centre on 28 November which includes a sunrise concert from GBSR Duo (piano and percussion), the Colin Currie Group in Steve Reich's Tehilim, and all manner of events exploring the psalms relevance from John Donne to writing workshops.

The evening concert will feature Nicholas Collon, Aurora Orchestra, the BBC Singers in a programme co-curated by Edmund de Waal. The concert features Leonard Bernstein's Chichester Psalms (a work that celebrates Bernstein's Jewish heritage with music worthy of Broadway), and Bach's Magnificat (not strictly a Psalm but reflecting the Lutheran tradition), plus a new work by Nico Muhly.

Muhly's Frideswide Psalms has been co-commissioned by Aurora Orchestra and the Schwarzman Centre. Frideswide was an Anglo-Saxon princess, who become the patron saint of Oxford and the University of Oxford. She is credited as the founder of an Oxford monastery which became part of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford. Muhly's new piece involves 'several interwoven psalms, whose imagery circles the life of the early medieval Saint Frideswide' with texts both from the Book of Common Prayer and the 14th century Wycliffe translation.

There are three opportunities to catch the programme, at Saffron Hall on 27 November, at the Schwarzman Centre on 28 November and at Kings Place, London on 29 November.

Further information about the Day of Psalms from the Schwarzman Centre website, and see Aurora Orchestra's website for details of their concerts. 

String instruments, they’ve been at the centre of my musical life for as long as I can remember.

Rachael Montesino Young (Photo: Stuart Wood)

Cellist Rachael Montesino Young on the influence of Jacqueline du Pré, both of whom studied with William Pleeth, and looking forward to her concerts with London Virtuosi Ensemble.

[see Robert's 2015 interview with her, 'From ritual humiliation to meditation']

String instruments, they've been at the centre of my musical life for as long as I can remember. Whether it's the soulful, human sound of the cello – my own instrument, the thrill of a virtuoso violin, the sobering and heart-warming viola or the plangent tones of a viol. Whether played as a solo instrument, as a choir of strings in a string orchestra, or the sound of the collective string sections of a great orchestra, the alchemy of string instruments in whatever form, are somehow able to express the whole range of human experience and emotion and even beyond, reaching out and hinting at other worlds beyond ours.

And in the hands of a great artist such as Jacqueline du pre, the possibilities are for expression are truly without limits. She was one who was able to create an endless possibility of colours – pale and limpid, fierce and heroic, wondrous, tender, melting, heartbreaking, romantic, heart-warming, ennobling and on and on. And for me more than any other string player I've heard, she was the supreme artist for this.

So, it's unsurprising that all my recent projects –both upcoming and newly minted, have strings at their beating creative heart. My just recently completed a cello album called The Bearable Lightness of Being collaborates with the pianist Sophia Rahman and is dedicated to my cello heroine Jacqueline du Pre.

I was very fortunate to have shared the same cello teacher as du Pre, in the late, great William "Bill" Pleeth, and so have first-hand experience of the teaching and some of the qualities Bill would have focused on developing in du Pre's playing. She was of course her own greatest teacher, as all great artists are, but it took someone of Pleeth's artistry, imagination and approach to the cello, to develop her genius to its full fruition.

The Bearable Lightness of Being takes as its inspiration du Pre's 'Recital' recording - with a few additional surprises along the way and is due for release in January 2027.

But my upcoming orchestral projects in London involve a slightly bigger beast than a cello as they are collaborations with the London Virtuosi Ensemble – LoVE.

LoVE is a string orchestra ensemble I recently founded, with an aim to continue and foster the rich and great traditions of English string playing.

I grew up listening avidly to recordings of the great chamber orchestras active in London in the 1960's,70s and 80s. Ensembles such as The English Chamber Orchestra – at that time led by the wonderful Emanuel (Manny) Hurwitz, The Academy of St Martin's in the Field – founded and led by Sir Neville Marriner and the many wonderful recordings made by string quartets - the top of my list for me being The Amadeus Quartet but there were many more.

LoVE also takes as inspiration the supreme technique and impressive ensemble playing of Russian virtuosi string orchestras from the 1960s and 70s such as The Moscow Virtuosi.

A Terrible Beauty, LoVE's debut concert is on December 1st is part of the Temple Church's, London Winter Music Festival and is a journey through pre-war, 20th century English String Music and verse written between 1900 –1939.

And It's a great honour for us all to be performing alongside two eminent and supreme actors – Dame Harriet Smith and Toby Jones, who will be performing the themed verse interspersed throughout the musical works on the programme.

The Artistic Director of the Temple Winter Festival Robert Ogden writes, "A Terrible Beauty explores the extraordinary flowering of English string music in the first decades of the twentieth century — music of radiant lyricism and haunting emotional depth, written in the shadow of a rapidly changing world. This programme brings together some of the most evocative and beloved works in the English string repertoire.

At its heart lies a profound sense of beauty touched by fragility. Composed between the final years of the Edwardian era and the uncertain decades between two world wars, these works reflect a society poised between nostalgia and modernity, serenity and upheaval. The soaring lines of Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis seem to suspend time itself, while the aching tenderness of Finzi's Romance and Elgar's Elegy speaks of loss, remembrance and longing. Frank Bridge's elegant Valse–Intermezzo captures the glittering surface of a vanished world, and Michael Tippett's exhilarating Concerto for Double String Orchestra bursts forth with rhythmic vitality, yet beneath its energy lies an undercurrent of tension and unease, hinting at the uncertainties and gathering shadows of a world on the brink of conflict.

From the sweeping grandeur of Elgar's Introduction & Allegro to the luminous spirituality of Vaughan Williams, this is music of extraordinary richness and emotional power - at once intimate and expansive, deeply English yet universal in its humanity.

A compelling and atmospheric evening of string music, A Terrible Beauty invites audiences into a sound world of warmth, passion and poignancy"

LoVE's second London December concert is at King's Place on December 18th. Again, it's an evening of classical music and poetry but this time curated and themed to take the audience on a journey through the winter solstice and the reflective introversion it can evoke.

I'm particularly looking forward to collaborating with the wonderful up and coming Estonian Violinist Hans Christian Aarvik who was winner of the Neilsen violin competition 2022. He is featuring as soloist in his compatriot Arvo Pärt's evocative work Fratres. As a fellow Estonian Hans brings a depth and subtlety of understanding to Pärts music, as I've witnessed many times when he has appeared as soloist with conductor Paavo Jarvi at Paavo's Parnu Music festival.

Hans Christian Aarvik will also feature as soloist in the rarely performed Souvenir d'un Lier Cher in an arrangement for string orchestra.

So, Fratres will set the atmosphere and mood for the evening and the evening will also include evocative music from Shostakovich and Sibelius and will conclude with one of Tchaikovsky's masterpieces, his Serenade for strings.

This serenade is a rich and highly colourful work that I like to think depicts the journey between autumn & spring – a winter's journey. From the encroaching darkness, we are led into the winter solstice and on through the slow return of light that heralds spring.

We begin with the sombre, sobering, autumnal beauty of a chorale reminiscent of Russian orthodox choirs and then on through to a winter ball of the second movement, with all its elegance, gaiety and gossip. We are then taken through to a deep, reflective and introverted Elegy – Tchaikovsky at his most richly expressive using the strings to their full sonorous power and possibility. And then on to the finale which begins by evoking a scene of a freezing winter morning on the icy Steppe. The music gradually reveals a frozen winter landscape, and then we might faintly begin to make out peasants slowly waking and readying themselves for work. What follows their toil is revelry, drinking and dancing and so onwards abruptly to return to the heart-warming, ennobling embrace of the sobering, sacred chorale of the opening. The peasants have the last word however as their gaiety gradually returns growing more insistent, driving on to a triumphant and exuberant end, heralding the return of spring and the light.

If these projects and concerts spark any interest, we'd LoVE to see you! But if you can't make either of them at this busy time of the year, we are planning our debut recording in March 2027, so maybe you can catch up with our work through this recording.

We will keep you posted .....

Love Rachael Montesino Young x

Samling Institute for Young Artists: Celebrating 30 years of transforming the landscape for classical singers growing up in North East England

Samling Institute for Young Artists is celebrating its 30th birthday, that is 30 years of supporting early-career singers and pianists and through its innovative Samling Academy that has transformed the landscape for classical singers growing up in North East England. 

In celebration, on Friday 6 November there is a gala at Wigmore Hall when with alumni from Samling’s programmes and special guest Adrian Lester.

The concert illustrates the power of music to change lives, how composers and poets have harnessed the power of music to tell its own story. Music performed includes Franz Schubert’s Shepherd on the Rock, (with guest clarinettist Eliott Berdugo), Antonín Dvořák’s Gypsy Songs, Robert Schumann's Andersen Lieder and ends with one of the greatest love songs to art, Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Serenade to Music in a special arrangement for eight solo voices.

Acting and a close attention to text are at the centre of Samling Institute’s teaching ethos and every programme includes a stage actor on the leadership team. Earlier this year, actor Adrian Lester, star of the RSC’s recent Cyrano de Bergerac, joined the Samling Artist Programme as a coach. Threading together the programme at Wigmore Hall, he will read poems by writers including Andrew Marvell, Walter de la Mare, Seamus Heaney and Carol Ann Duffy.

The performers will include British soprano Nardus Williams, Portuguese mezzo-soprano Cláudia Ribas, Scottish tenor Euan McDonald, Swiss baritone Felix Gygli, American pianist Jonathan Ware, British pianist Alfred Fardell, and four recent members of Samling Academy, soprano Tia Radix-Callixte, mezzo- soprano Lauren Bagge, tenor Benedict Munden and baritone Fabian Tindale Geere.

Full details from the Samling website.

Here be monsters! Prologue Opera bring Jonathan Dove's community opera The Monster in the Maze to Hastings

Jonathan Dove's 2015 community opera, The Monster in The Maze was written for Simon Rattle, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic and the Aix-en-Provence Festival. Following those 2015 UK performances the work had to wait until 2024 to be performed again, when Music in the Round presented it in Sheffield [see my review]. For that performance, tenor Anthony Flaum played Theseus and now Prologue Opera, which Flaum founded in 2017, is bringing the production, directed by Rosie Kat, to Hastings.

Anthony Flaum, CEO & Founder, Prologue Opera. commented: "Jonathan Dove gave Hastings its first community opera on the pier in 1990. Nearly four decades on, the town isn't just the venue, it's the story. Every wave, every backstory, every voice in this production comes from Hastings itself. This is what happens when a community gets to tell its own myth."

The Monster in the Maze will be presented at the White Rock Theatre, Hastings with three public performances during half-term on 18 and 19 February 2027. For the production, Prologue Opera will be partnered by the White Rock Theatre, Hasting Philharmonic, The Bright Foundation, Dear Future Films and Sussex music hub Create Music. 

The performances will combine professional soloists, conductor and creative team with White Rock Youth Theatre, children’s chorus from local schools, an adult community chorus, Hastings Philharmonic players and a Learning Orchestra of local young players and place-based elements to root the project in Hastings.

The Monster in the Maze: images from the project launch in Hastings

The performers will include Sir John Tomlinson as King Minos alongside mezzo-soprano Louise Winter, tenor Anthony Flaum (as Theseus) and Tim Nelson (as Daedalus). There will be puppetry from The Bright Foundation and Long Nose Puppetry.

Sir John Tomlinson added, "I have never before performed in a Jonathan Dove opera, but admired them greatly from the audience, so I look forward to being King Minos in 'Monster in the Maze'. The Monster I know well from the inside, having sung the title role in Birtwistle's 'Minotaur' at Covent Garden some years ago. Like all Myths, it's as relevant now in our own time as much as ever it was, and it's such a powerful, deeply emotional tale."

As well as working with local schools, there will be workshops with children to co-create a piece based around the myth and the themes in the show. 

Full details from the Prologue Opera website, tickets from the White Rock Theatre.

Forget Shakespeare: with Jacques Imbrailo & Haegee Lee as Hamlet & Ophélie, Chelsea Opera Group make a strong case for Ambroise Thomas's opera under Jonathon Cole-Swinard's sympathetic direction

Ambroise Thomas: Hamlet - Malachy Frame, Ruari Bowen, Jacques Imbrailo, Jonathan Cole-Swinard, Jay Broadhurst, Grace Durham, Richard Wiegold, Thomas D Hopkinson, Chelsea Opera Group [Photo: Julian Guidera]

Ambroise Thomas: Hamlet; Jacques Imbrailo, Haegee Lee, Richard Wiegold, Grace Durham, Jay Broadhurst, Chelsea Opera Group, Jonathan Cole-Swinard; Cadogan Hall
Reviewed 1 November 2026

Thomas's Hamlet might not be quite top-drawer grand opera, but with superb solo contributions and some sophisticate orchestral playing this performance played to the work's strengths

Ambroise Thomas is the nearly man of French 19th-century opera. Born seven years before Gounod and thirty years before Massenet, he was effectively the advance-guard of the composers who developed French opera following on from Meyerbeer. As director of the Conservatoire he was responsible for both modernising the organisation and imposing a conservative curriculum, including attempting to prevent composers such as César Franck and Gabriel Fauré from influencing the students. Thomas wrote a significant number of operas, many of them opera comique and his best known is Mignon (based loosely on Goethe) which began as an opera comique in 1866 though he went on to add sung recitatives and the work was almost as popular as Gounod's Faust.

The librettists for Mignon were Michel Carré and Jules Barbier, who also wrote the libretto for Gounod's Faust. And in 1859 they turned to Shakespeare's Hamlet to create an libretto for Thomas for a five-act grand opera. Their source was Alexandre Dumas's French version of the play from 1847, which was truer to Shakespeare than earlier French versions but still introduced 'improvements' so by modern standards, it was a rather free adaptation of the original. No Fortinbras and no opening scene on the ramparts; a love scene for Hamlet and Ophelia added to the first act; Claudius does not send Hamlet to England, so Rosencrantz and Guildenstern do not die; the rather striking ending has the ghost of Hamlet's father reappear and condemn Gertrude, Claudius, and Laertes as they are dying.

The opera was premiered at the Paris Opera in 1868. Hamlet was sung by the baritone Jean-Baptiste Faure because no suitable tenor could be found (though the tenor version was eventually premiered in 2025). The opera was staged, in Italian, in London in 1869 and went on to be staged in Leipzig, Budapest, Brussels, Prague, New York City, Saint Petersburg, Berlin, and Vienna within five years of the Paris premiere. A shorter version of the Finale with Hamlet's death is associated with the London performances but there is no record that this version was performed in Thomas's lifetime. The role of Ophélie was a great favourite of Nelly Melba and reputedly when she sang the role, the opera ended with her mad scene!

In 1980, the fledgling Buxton Festival presented a production of Thomas' Hamlet (with Thomas Allen in the title role). Since then, sightings of the opera in the UK have been relatively rare. Covent Garden presented it in 2003, for the first time since 1910 (!) and Opera North gave it in 1995, but it remains a rarity, dependent on the right baritone and soprano. Buxton returned to the opera in 2025 in a production directed by Jack Furness [see my review].

It was thus heartening to find Chelsea Opera Group (COG) presenting the work at Cadogan Hall on Sunday 1 November 2026 (the same weekend as Gothic Opera unearthed another French rarity, Halévy's La Dame de Pique, see our review]. COG's conductor was Jonathon Cole-Swinard (Head of Music and Chorus Director at Garsington Opera). Jacques Imbrailo was Hamlet [following on from his Pelléas in Aldeburgh earlier this year, see our review, and anticipating his Oreste in Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride at ENO] with Haegee Lee as Ophélie [last seen as Lakmé with COG in 2024, see my review]. Jay Broadhurst was Laërte [last seen with COG in Verdi's Macbeth last year when he sang Malcolm and jumped in as Macduff]. Richard Wiegold and Grace Durham were Claudius and Gertrude, with Ruari Bowen as Marcellus/Grave Digger, Malachy Frame as Horatio/Grave Digger, and Thomas D Hopkinson as the Ghost.

A gothic feast for the eyes with some very fine singing: Gothic Opera in the UK premiere of Halévy's La Dame de Pique

Halévy: La Dame de Pique - Gothic Opera at Battersea Arts Centre [Photo: Craig Fuller]

Fromental Halévy: La Dame de Pique; Grace O’Malley, James Hutchings, Sam Utley, Charlie Epps, Alice Usher, director: Jonny Danciger, conductor: Hannah von Wiehler, arranger: Leon Haxby; Gothic Opera at Battersea Arts Centre
Reviewed by Saskia Bibb, 29 October 2026

For this year’s Halloween production from Gothic Opera, we are in the last days of the Ancien régime to witness the havoc wreaked by a pact with the devil — a legend of a magic ring and the three secret cards that guarantee success at the gambling tables. 

Musically it is a triumph. Halévy’s opera lives up to its billing as an inexplicably neglected gem and the cast is a treasure trove of vocal talent. It is visually compelling: atmospheric sets, glorious costumes and clean, effective blocking. The drama falls down a little, with some clunky acting and the rather on-the-nose adapted dialogue.

We are first introduced to foreman of the miners, Andre Roskaw, played by Charlie Epps, and Lisanka, the governor’s daughter whom he aspires to marry if he can get enough money together, played by Alice Usher. Usher’s commanding, dramatic voice is put centre stage as she explains the Polowska family legend. In her interactions with other characters she is less convincing though, in particular her dialogue is rather stilted. Epps’s light, youthful baritone has a gentle and honest timbre that is a real gift to his characterisation of André, giving him an earthy, authentic quality. To start with his portrayal is naturalistic (his dialogue is impressively so given the rather crude material) but as the darkness within triumphs, Epps can see that only a healthy dose of melodrama will do. If you can’t pull out all the stops when driven mad by an ancient curse in a Halloween opera, then when can you?

Halévy: La Dame de Pique - Grace O'Malley, Charlie Epps - Gothic Opera at Battersea Arts Centre [Photo: Craig Fuller]

Music crying out to be heard: the first instalment of Arcangelo's English Baroque Journey at Wigmore Hall focused on sacred music for the Chapel Royal

Chapel Royal at St James's Palace

The Music More Full Than It Was: Christopher Gibbons, Matthew Locke, Pelham Humfrey, John  Blow, Purcell, Handel, Maurice Greene; Arcangelo, Jonathan Cohen; Wigmore Hall
Reviewed 30 October 2026

Exploring sacred music from the Restoration through to early Handel with a focus on the Chapel Royal, Arcangelo give us vibrant performances of lesser-known gems, music crying out to be heard

Histories of English music have a tendency to jump from Purcell to Handel as if they were the only major figures at the time. In fact, Purcell's friend and teacher, Blow, had as great a reputation as the younger composer during his lifetime and there were plenty of other composers whose music deserves to be part of the story. 

At Wigmore Hall on Friday 30 October 2026, Jonathan Cohen and Arcangelo presented The Music More Full Than It Was, the first event in the ensemble's multi-concert English Baroque Journey. For this first instalment we concentrated on sacred music with the programme that included music by Christopher Gibbons (1615-1676), Matthew Locke (c.1621-1677), Pelham Humfrey (1647-1674), John Blow (1649-1708), Henry Purcell (1659-1695), George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) , and Maurice Greene (1696-1755), taking us from the revival of the Chapel Royal after the Restoration through to Handel writing in the early years of his residency in England.

There were eight singers - Hilary Cronin, Daisy Livesy, James Hall, Jeremy Budd, Hugo Brady, Matthew Long, Malachy Frame, Will Gaunt - and an instrumental ensemble of six strings, oboe (in Handel's Chandos Anthem), organ, theorbo and harpsichord (play by Jonathan Cohen). The singers fluidly moved between solo and ensemble and only in Handel's Chandos Anthem, O praise the Lord with one consent were there distinct arias. Similarly, the instrumental forces used moved between just continuo to full ensemble with a varied line up (oboe only in Handel, but no viola in some).

From Whitehall to the World: Dr Gregory Boardman on the impact of the English Chamber Orchestra’s education and community programmes

English Chamber Orchestra Royal Gala Fundraiser 2026

The labels music education or community music often come with baggage that often suggests a lesser quality of musical outcomes. In reaching out beyond the concert space, the English Chamber Orchestra’s (ECO) Close Encounters initiative nurtures excellence no matter where they are or what the level of activity. In doing so, the ECO delivers something vitally important; connecting our musical future with music making right now.  

It’s not enough just to count all the happy faces, happy faces don’t guarantee long term sustainability. In delivering their projects and innovating how they engage people of all ages, the English Chamber Orchestra are working towards the longer-term impact and the wider benefits of this essential work. 

Nurturing a new generation of skilled musicians and composers for the creative economy is a natural product of flourishing grassroots activity. The ECO's newly announced New Horizons programme will ensure that the orchestra delivers a commitment to those aspiring to the highest level of performance and professional development. However, for the team at the English Chamber Orchestra, the true joy lies in supporting a musical world for all. Whether the orchestra is on tour or in the classroom, the benchmark of success takes many forms. 

English Chamber Orchestra: Lights, Camera, Score

The impact of the English Chamber Orchestra’s education and community programmes extends far beyond the performances themselves.

Parabola and Circula: Marc Blitzstein's forgotten Bauhaus opera to receive its premiere recording on Capriccio as part of new series by the Bauhaus-Archiv.

Marc Blitzstein is one of those 20th century figures whose name is perhaps better known than his work. The name of his 1937 pro-union musical The Cradle Will Rock still resonates, though his opera Regina, an adaptation of Lillian Hellman's play The Little Foxes, has not made it much past a first revelatory recording (from John Mauceri and Scottish Opera in 1992). His best known work is perhaps that undertaken on the music of another composer, Kurt Weill, as Blitzstein's translations and adaptations of The Threepenny Opera and Mahagonny played an important role in the widening appreciation of Weill's music in the period after the composer's death.

Blitzstein studied composition at the Curtis Institute of Music, then went to Europe to continue his studies. He failed to get on with Arnold Schoenberg in Berlin, but did study with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Between 1929 and 1933 he travelled extensively in Europe, including a German tour with Aaron Copland. His music of this period includes his Piano Sonata (1927) and Piano Concerto (1931), works described as 'Boulanger-influenced products of American modernism' and which he referred to as "wild, dissonant and percussive."

Now, another side to this European Blitzstein has been revealed, his opera Parabola and Circula from 1929. In November 2026, Capriccio will release the world premiere recording of Marc Blitzstein’s Parabola and Circula, the work having been premiered in a concert performance at the Berlin Philharmonie on 21 September 2025, as part of Musikfest Berlin when the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra performed it under the baton of Karl-Heinz Steffens.

Marc Blitzstein in 1937
[Photo: Federal Theatre Project - Library of Congress]

The work was originally intended to receive its premiere in 1930 in collaboration with the Bauhaus in Dessau. However, the planned production never materialised, and the opera largely fell into obscurity. 1930 was the year that Hannes Meyer was fired as director of the Bauhaus, to be replaced by Mies van der Rohe who refocused the school's work to concentrate on teaching.

Since 2023, the Bauhaus-Archiv / Museum für Gestaltung has been exploring the largely overlooked musical history of the school through its Bauhaus Music project. The inaugural festival commemorated the legendary Bauhaus Week of 1923, presenting works by composers including Igor Stravinsky, Paul Hindemith, Kurt Weill and Stefan Wolpe. In 2024, the festival took place under the highly topical theme of Freedom. A particular highlight of the research project followed in 2025 with the world premiere of Marc Blitzstein’s Parabola and Circula at Musikfest Berlin. The 2026 edition, taking place in Berlin on 13 and 14 November, explores the interplay of music, colour, movement and perception under the motto I Feel Air from Another Planet.

Parabola and Circula is set in an abstract world of geometric shapes and tells a tragic love story between a parabola and a circle. The couple live in seemingly perfect harmony with their adopted children, Rectangle and Point. However, their friends begin to question this unconditional love, arguing that it restricts the lovers’ freedom and independence. Parabola’s growing doubts ultimately lead to catastrophe, culminating in Circula’s death. In this opera of approximately one hour, Blitzstein combines geometric abstraction with the powerful human emotions at the heart of musical theatre.

Marc Blitztein's Parabola and Circula is released on the Capriccio label on 6 November 2026. Karl-Heinz Steffens conducts the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra with Aleksander Nohr, and Mari Eriksmoen. The release also marks the launch of a new CD series by the Bauhaus-Archiv. Full details from Capriccio. 

John Storgårds launches his inaugural season as musical director of Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra with focus on Jean Coulthard

John Storgårds & Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra [Photo: Curtis Perry]

John Storgårds launches a new chapter when he conducts his inaugural concerts as music director with Canada’s National Arts Centre (NAC) Orchestra in Ottawa on 4 and 5 November 2026. Storgårds made his debut with the orchestra in 2013 and was principal guest conductor from 2015 to 2026. He succeeds Alexander Shelley, who led the ensemble for 11 seasons [see my 2023 interview with Alexander Shelly]. In the UK, Storgårds is best known as the chief conductor of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra 

For the inaugural concerts, Storgårds conducts Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 with soloist Élisabeth Pion (Gold Laureate of the 2025 Honens International Piano Competition), Charles Ives's The Unanswered Question, Antonín Dvořák's Symphony No. 3, and Jean Coulthard's Symphonic image: Vision of the North.

The presence of Coulthard's work reflects the way Storgårds' first season has a strong focus on Canadian voices, highlighting rising stars, celebrated performers, and some of the country's most influential composers. 

A particular focus of the season is the music of Jean Coulthard (1908–2000), one of Canada's most significant composers. Thanks to a scholarship she studied at the Royal College of Music in 1928-1929 where she was a pupil of Kathleen Long, R.O. Morris, and Ralph Vaughan Williams. She went on to study with Béla Bartók, Aaron Copland, and Arnold Schoenberg and worked with Bernard Wagenaar of the Juilliard School, New York. In 1948, she met the British composer Elizabeth Poston (who was visiting Canada) and they began a long friendship and an extensive correspondence over the next 30 years.

Her work appears across three of the NAC Orchestra's orchestral programs and a chamber concert. In January 2027, Storgårds will lead the NAC Orchestra in Coulthard's Symphony No. 1, a work not performed in full since its 1950s premiere. He will also devote his first recording project with the Orchestra to Coulthard's music, bringing renewed attention to her remarkable artistic legacy.

Further information from the Orchestra's website.

Illuminating connections: in Kin, Lotte Betts Dean & Joseph Havlat explore folksongs from across Europe and North America

Kin: Vaughan Williams, Moeran, Grainger, Britten, Doreen Senior, Canteloube, Bartok, Michael Finissy, Josephine Stephenson, Louise Drewett, Joseph Havlat, Isabella Gellis, Ruth Wall; Lotte Betts Dean, Joseph Havlat; DELPHIAN
Reviewed 19 October 2026

Two young Australians and a programme of folksongs culled from across Europe and North America conspire to create a programme by turns thoughtful and moving, as Havlat's sensitive piano complements Betts Dean's expressively plangent tone

Two young Australians, one with Czech and German origins, the other English and German Ashkenazi, both trained at the Royal Academy of Music in London where they met as students. On their new disc, Kin on Delphian, mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts Dean and pianist Joseph Havlat explore their love of folksong with arrangements by Vaughan Williams, Moeran, Grainger, Britten, Doreen Senior, Canteloube, Bartok, Michael Finissy, Josephine Stephenson, Louise Drewett, Joseph Havlat, Isabella Gellis and Ruth Wall

In her booklet note, Lotte Betts Dean comments, "As two non-indigenous white Australians... we are perhaps always in search of a sense of homeland or belonging. We have also both left our ancestors' adopted home of Australia and are still 'expats'."

Celebrating 250 years of diversity: Odaline de la Martinez's London Festival of American Music returns for its 10th edition

Odaline de la Martinez's London Festival of American Music returns for its 10th edition from 9 to 13 November 2026 at The Warehouse. Celebrating 250 years of diversity, the Festival presents works by over 30 composers across five nights of concerts with three world premieres and 20 UK premieres. Over half the composers represented are women.

The Festival opens with Singapore-born conductor Tianhui Ng directing Lontano Ensemble in Latinos in America, a programme of works by Puerto Rican, Mexican American and Cuban American composers, many receiving their UK or world premieres. The next evening, Odaline de la Martinez conducts Lontano in Percussion!! featuring two works by Jewish émigrée Ursula Mamlok alongside three newly commissioned world premieres from Neva Derewetzky, Charles Shadle and Daniel Thomas Davis.

Soprano Roberta Philip joins forces with pianist Valentina Wang for African American art song from the classics of Florence Price, Undine Smith Moore, Margaret Bonds and William Grant Still to George Walker, Moses Hogan, and Hall Johnson — alongside the world of Britney Boykin's Moments in Sonder. Odaline de la Martinez and Lontano return with Solos, Duos and More, featuring Daniel Asia’s Pine’s Last Poems, Arlene Sierra’s A Young Mind in Old Bees, as well as works by Alfred Lerdahl, Barbara Jazwinski, Elena Ruehr, Augusta Reed Thomas, and Aaron Einbond. 

The festival concludes with Suzi Digby conducting VOCE Chamber Choir in choral works b y American composers including Eric Whitacre, Caroline Shaw, Frank Ticheli, Nico Muhly, Reena Esmail, Michael Gordon, Nick Strimple, Jake Runestad, Dolly Parton and Odaline de la Martinez.

Full details from the Lontano website.

Inviting the audience to experience music as something that is not only heard but also seen, embodied and mediated.

Lovemusic

On Sunday 1 November at the French Institute in London the French collective, Lovemusic is presenting an event that asks the question 'how do we listen when sound is inseparable from image, gesture, language and technology?'

Lovemusic specialises in new music, and the event blends together music, theatre, dance, video, light and technology for an experience where you’ll need to open your eyes as much as your ears. From a dialogue between flute and sign language by Helmut Oehring, Kuba Krzewiński’s unique approach to violin and cello, to Tine Surel Lange’s portrait of the contemporary urban landscape and Finbar Hosie’s ASMR and screening experiment. From Mathis Saunier’s performance to Neil Luck’s Production Apocrypha, discover a one of a kind programme supported by the Diaphonique fund for contemporary music.

Full details from the French Institute's website.

It really deserves to be heard & seen: baritone Charlie Epps on Gothic Opera's UK premiere production of Halévy's La Dame de Pique

Charles-Aimable Battaille as André Roskow in
Fromental Halévy's La Dame de Pique at the Opéra Comique in 1850

 Gothic Opera’s production of Fromental Halévy's La Dame de Pique opens this Thursday (29 October 2026) at Battersea Arts Centre, directed by Jonny Danciger, conducted by Hannah von Wiehler. 

Loosely based on the Pushkin story of the same name, Halévy’s La Dame de Pique pre-dates Tchaikovsky’s better-known opera adaptation by forty years and premiered at the Opéra Comique in 1850.

Saskia Bibb hears from baritone Charlie Epps, who plays the role of André Roskaw on 29 and 31 October.

So you've just finished studying at Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. Tell me how this project has helped with starting out in the profession.

It's really important that these opportunities exist, where there's a fully staged, fully invested-in and believed-in opera. The fact that it hasn’t been performed for so long makes for a perfect opportunity for young artists to revive it and, in many ways, to invent something new. There are some stage directions and some documented evidence of how it would have been performed at the premiere, but there’s a lot of space for creativity as well, which Jonny [the director] has really tapped into.

This is my first professional role - and the audition was my first professional audition - so it’s also great not having to compare myself to anyone else who may have performed the role! You're creating a standard for yourself, with people around you who are in the same boat. It's a really nice way to start and to gain experience.

Tell us about your character. How do you see him?