A new German website, FOYER.DE is hoping to offer one answer as the site is offering a curated, searchable selection of videos from the internet

With the restrictions in live performance, artists and ensembles all over the world have been turning to online performances and what has been created has been imaginative and inventive. But how to find it!

A new German website, FOYER.DE is hoping to offer one answer as the site is offering a curated, searchable selection of videos from the internet, bringing together the best live streams, videos, and TV events from opera, concerts, dance, music documentaries, and much more. The website is the brainchild of Winfried Hanuschik, publisher of the classical music magazine Crescendo.

The interface is intended to be user-friendly, and currently there are more than 500 which can be played directly on FOYER.DE. In addition to free offerings, the site also includes paid ones (which are marked as such) and there is a search facility. At the moment the website seems to be just in German, but we can but hope.

Also, if you are an artist, then you can submit your video to FOYER.DE via its submissions page.

Russian National Orchestra celebrates its 30th birthday with gala live-streamed from Moscow

Vadim Repin, Sergej Krylov, Alexander Rudin, Boris Berezovsky, Mikkhail Pletnev

 

If you are feeling a bit Beethovened out, then how about celebrating his 250th birthday with a (virtual) visit to Russia. At 4pm GMT (5pm CET) the Russian National Orchestra will be celebrating its 30th birthday with a gala concert at the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall in Moscow. The orchestra will be conducted by its artistic director and founder, Mikhail Pletnev. 

The programme for the concert is being kept under wraps, but the guest soloists will include violinists Vadim Repin, and Sergej Krylov, cellist Alexander Rudin and pianist Boris Berezovsky.

The Russian National Orchestra was founded in Moscow by pianist and conductor Mikhail Pletnev, and since then has released over 80 recordings. It was the first Russian orchestra to win a Grammy Award (in 2004 for its recording of Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf), and was the first Russian orchestra to play at the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican, and in Israel.

Full details from the orchestra's website. The concert will be streamed on YouTube and meloman.ru

Dancing Folk: Jeff Moore's homage to Percy Grainger played by amateur and professional musicians across the globe in aid of Help Musicians

The Musicians for Musicians project, which aims to raise funds for Help Musicians, has released a new track as a follow up to the album Many Voices on a Theme of Isolation. Dancing Folk is a single, new folk-inspired piece by Jeff Moore which Moore describes as a tribute to the music of Percy Grainger except that in Moore's new piece, all the folk-tunes are fake and invented by Moore! The result is a delightfully engaging tribute to the sheer joy of music making, and you can dance to it too.

The work is played by an on-line ensemble of both amateur and profession musicians from across the globe, including members of BBC Concert Orchestra, LSO, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra,Philharmonia Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra of the Swan, Carducci Quartet, Piatti Quartet, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, City of London Sinfonia, Sinfonia Viva, BBC NOW, West End shows such as Phantom of the Opera and The Book of Mormon, all conducted by Timothy Redmond.

Full details from the Dancing Folk website, and the single is available from Bandcamp.

Voces8's Live from London festival returns with live-streamed concerts for Advent and Christmas

Voces8's Live from London festival presented a series of live-streamed recital's by major choirs and vocal ensembles this Summer. The festival is returning, as Live from London - Christmas, in a new edition for the Advent and Christmas period, again with a stunning line-up of ensembles performing live. There will be concerts throughout the Advent and Christmas period, not only experienced ensembles but a young artists programme as well.

During Advent there will be concerts from Voces8 (whose guests will include violinist Rachel Podger), Apollo5, the Tallis Scholars, Take 6, the London Adventist Chorale, the Irish ensemble ANÚNA (directed by composer Michael McGlynn), the German vocal ensemble Amarcord, American choir The Aeolians and the choir of Westminster Abbey whose Christmas concert will be part of the festival. I Fagiolini will perform on Christmas Eve in a programme which includes Herbert Howells' four carol-anthems and Charpentier's iconic Messe de Minuit for voices, strings and flutes, itself a feast of Baroque carols.

A particular highlight will be the concerts from 25 December to 6 January 2021 when Paul McCreesh and Gabrieli Consort & Players will be performing Bach's Christmas Oratorio. The work was written as a sequence of linked cantatas, each to be performed on a particular feast during Christmas and Gabrieli will be performing each cantata on the day for which it was written. Soloists will include Carolyn Sampson, Anna Dennis, Helen Charlston, Tim Mead, Jeremy Budd, Hugo Hymas, Roderick Williams and Ashley Riches, and each concert will feature a chorale sung by youn students from Gabrieli Roar.

There will also be a number of Young Performer Spotlights during the festival with performances from Gabrieli Roar, VOCES8 Scholars, Canterbury Cathedral Girls’ Choir, VERSA, National Youth Chamber Choir of Great Britain, Voices of Singapore Children's Choir and German Gents.

As with the original Live From London, this new festival has been designed to raise money for artists, venues and promoters to cover their COVID-19 losses, and to reunite the world's many singers, and audiences with much-needed live concerts over the usually busy festive period. The original Live From London festival has so far sold over 40,000 tickets across the globe.

 Full information from the Voces8 Foundation website.

 

Music and architecture combined in The Sixteen's A Choral Odyssey

This time of year we are usually looking forward to The Sixteen's forthcoming Choral Pilgrimage, the choir's annual tour round cathedrals and churches of the UK, usually performing music that was originally written for the spaces and often including contemporary works. Inevitably, whatever plans the group had for a Choral Pilgrimage in 2020/2021 have had to be shelved.

Instead, The Sixteen are presenting A Choral Odyssey, an on-line series of five-programmes which will combine music and architecture. Presented by Simon Russell Beale, each will take an in-depth look at a wide-ranging selection of choral music in locations that are relevant to the music and which inform the theme and choice of repertoire. Starting on 18 November 2020, episodes will be released every Wednesday, all available to watch on demand until 31 January 2021. The series will culminate in an ‘as live’ stream of The Sixteen’s Christmas at Cadogan concert (23 December). 

The series begins at  Magdalen College, Oxford with music by two late 15th/early 16th century composers, Richard Davy and John Sheppard, who both held the post of Informator Choristarum at Magdalen College. Then we move to the Roman Catholic church of Our Lady of the Assumption and St. Gregory in Soho, built 1789-90 on the site of a Catholic chapel (originally part of the Portuguese Embassy and subsequently the Bavarian Embassy) pillaged during the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots of 1780, and here we have a programme of music by Spanish Renaissance composer Francisco Guerrero.

At the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at Shakespeare's Globe we have music by Henry Purcell, and at Hatfield House there is music by William Byrd (contemporaneous with the house) and by another Roman Catholic in difficult circumstances, Arvo Pärt. Hatfield House is also the home of the Marquess of Salisbury who is patron of The Sixteen.

At Penshurst Place in Kent, which King Henry VIII used as a hunting lodge and it is believed that he may well have spent Christmas there one year, we hear a programme of early and traditional carols including one by Henry himself (only the chorus survives so Cecilia McDowall has written new verses), and music by William Walton. Finally, The Sixteen's annual Christmas concert is being live-streamed from Cadogan Hall.

Full details from The Sixteen's website.

Live and on-line: Sage Live 2020 launches with three concerts from the Royal Northern Sinfonia

Sage Gateshead (Photo Simon Burgon)

The Sage Gateshead is returning to live performances with Sage Live 2020, a seven-week season of live concerts beginning 23 October 2020, with all performances being live-streamed. The concerts are being announced in waves, with the first three weeks of concerts now confirmed.

The Royal Northern Sinfonia will be giving three Friday evening concerts. Jessica Cottis conducts a programme which includes Jean Francaix's Concerto for Double Bass (with Philip Nelson) and work by the contemporary American composer Jessie Montgomery. Lars Vogt will be directing Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5 'Emperor' from the piano, alongside a new commission from Kristina Arakelyan. Chloe van Soeterstède conducts a programme which includes Tchaikovsky's Andante Cantabile (with cellist Steffan Morris) and Iain Farrington's chamber version of Sibelius' Symphony No.5. Other gigs include an appearance from she of the Northumbrian pipes, Katheryn Tickell.

Sage Gateshead also recently launched its 20/21 season of online activity, including Make Music – its weekly programme of adult music classes, its Young People’s Programme which usually offers musical activity for over 10,000 young people, and its artist development programme which supports musicians from across the region. This activity has now moved online to ensure that people across the North can continue their music making as we head into the winter months.

The centre has also launched an ambitious fundraising campaign to raise £3 million to enable it to continue working in the current climate.

Full details from the Sage Gateshead website

Your chance to eavesdrop on musical jollity in Toronto: on-line gala benefiting the Royal Conservatory of Music

One of the effects of the way much of classical music is going on-line, as a result of the present crisis, is that we can eavesdrop on events which are taking place a long way away, and which in normal circumstances would be unavailable to us. 

The Royal Conservatory of Music (RCM) in Toronto, Canada is having an on-line gala event on 17 October 2020, The Resounding Concert which will feature a number of well-known performers who have performed at RCM's Koerner Hall, including sopranos Sondra Radvanovsky, and Barbara Hannigan, pianists Lang Lang and Jan Lisiecki (who is an alumnus of the conservatory), violinists James Ehnes and Daniel Hope, along with artists from other performing worlds including actress Meryl Streep, the singer k.d.lang and the singer/songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie.

The live-stream is free, but the conservatory is soliciting donations, and if you live in the area there are all sorts of other ways you can support. Full details from the RCM's website.

Positive Note Autumn Sessions

I last heard tenor Daniel Norman in 2019 in RVW's On Wenlock Edge with Sholto Kynoch and the Brodsky Quartet at the Oxford Lieder Festival with an animated film by Jeremy Hamway-Bidgood. This year, of course, Norman's diary rapidly emptied. He started producing on-line performances, including Oxford Bach Soloists' St John Passion in nine weekly episodes. Norman has developed this into Positive Note Films, and will be presenting an online festival in October, Positive Note Autumn Sessions. 

The festival will be behind a paywall, and they are currently crowdfunding so that they will be able to pay all the artists taking part in the festival. The intention is not only to enable performers to perform together again, but to earn an income as well.

The performances will not be live streamed, but created as films which avoids the technological problems associated with live-streaming and enables some post-production work. There will be also added content, such as some animation in one of the films. The performances are all taking place at the Silk Hall in Radley College in Oxfordshire.

The planned eight performances feature an impressive selection of performers in a wide range of repertoire:

• The Dance Continues with soprano Anna Dennis, mezzo-soprano Marta Fontanals Simmons, tenor Daniel Norman, baritone Roderick Williams, and pianist Sholto Kynoch in songs of birds and trees with shadow pupped animations by Jeremy Hamway-Bidgood
• the Gesualdo Six in Bushes and Briars, music of Nature and youth
• violinist Jonathan Stone and Sholto Kynoch in Beethoven and Mozart
• Daniel Norman and oboist Emily Pailthorpe in RVW's Blake settings with Blake's original images
• A voice of one's own songs by women composers performed by Diana Moore and John Reid 
• The truth about love featuring Percy Grainger's folk-song arrangements, Schubert's Shepherd on the Rock, Finzi's Bagatelles and Britten's Cabaret Songs with Helen Sherman, Claire Egan, Catriona Scott and Charlotte Brennand
• Haydn and Smetana piano trios with the Mitsu Trio

The crowdfunding runs until 8 October with an attractive range of rewards, and from then tickets will be available for purchase. Further details from the Crowdfunder website,  with more information at the Positive Note website after 8 October.

The Rakes Progress: Blackheath Halls Opera goes online with Nicky Spence, Ashley Riches, Francesca Chiejina

At a time when large-scale amateur music making is hardly possible, Blackheath Halls Opera, having cancelled plans for live performances of Verdi's Macbeth, has come up with a lively way to ensure that its members are able to continue performing, a 30-minute digested version of Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress, directed by James Hurley and film in Blackheath Halls and in the performers' homes. 

The film debuts on-line on Saturday 3 October 2020, and features a terrific cast with Nicky Spence (the company's patron) as Tom Rakewell, Ashley Riches as Nick Shadow, Francesca Chiejina as Anne Truelove, James Way as Sellem, Kitty Whately as Baba the Turk and Carolyn Williamson as Mother Goose, with musical director Christopher Stark and featuring Blackheath Halls Orchestra, Blackheath Halls Chorus, Royal Greenwich & Blackheath Halls Youth Choir.

All orchestral and chorus music was recorded by players in their own homes, aided by recordings prepared by singers at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. Blackheath Halls Opera aims to include 30% of participants who have not been involved in a production before, and chorus members often have no previous choral experience. 

The film follows the success in June of Blackheath Halls Opera's online performance of 'Tre sbirri, una carrozza' from Puccini's Tosca starring Matthew Rose.

 

Steravinsky's The Rakes Progress premieres on Saturday 3 October 2020 at 5.30pm on Blackheath Halls YouTube & Facebook

Still time to join up for the Benedetti Foundation & Kaleidescope Chamber Collective's Chamber Music Weekend

Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective at Wigmore Hall
Photo taken from Live Stream

Nicola Benedetti's Benedetti Foundation continues its remarkable on-line efforts to keep students, teachers and adults active and engaged musically. The foundation's virtual Mini Sessions continue during September, and there is also a chamber music weekend. In partnership with the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective, the foundation is offering its first virtual chamber music weekend, 26 and 27 September 2020.

The Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective musicians Tom Poster (piano), Elena Urioste (violin), Savitri Grier (violin), Rosalind Ventris (viola), Laura van der Heijden (cello) and Joseph Conyers (double bass) will present sectional rehearsals, discussions and talks, as well as offering the unique opportunity for participants to play along from home with the ensemble. All participants will receive three hours tuition per day with two hours all together at the start and end of the day and one hour in sectional groups.
This is the collective's first large-scale education project and co-directors Elena Urioste and Tom Poster commented that 'We can’t wait to share our love for chamber music and all that it can teach us about the world at large – communication, compassion for others, equality and establishing a clear voice – with the next generation of musicians.'

Full details from the Benedetti Foundation website,
The closing date for applications is Friday 11 September; there is a small admin fee to participate in the Mini Sessions. Bursary support is available – no one will be prevented from attending due to financial circumstances.

Using technology to solve the problems of creating live opera in cyberspace: White Snake Projects premiere Jorge Sosa and Cerise Jacobs' 'Alice in the Pandemic'

Technological limitations restrict what performers can do regarding performing together virtually, this means that everything we hear created in Ccyberspace is carefully constructed, and that the only way to achieve a sense of communal live performance is to have everyone in the same room. 

A new opera, Alice in the Pandemic from the American company White Snake aims to overcome these limitations thanks to a team of technological innovators whose work will enable performers to perform live simultaneously whilst being separate. Led by artistic director Cerise Jacobs, White Snake plans to premiere the virtual opera Alice in the Pandemic in October. Using Jacobs libretto with music by Jorge Sosa, the work aims to be an up-to-the minute versions of Lewis Carroll's story performed in cyberspace by three singers.

But central to the problem of presenting the opera is the issue of latency, electronic delay involved between the time the sound leaves the singer's mouth and the time it reaches its source. With three singers in three different locations performing live, each receiving the accompaniment, the problem is the latency of the internet, the listener will not hear the three singers as simultaneous. As anyone who has tried to perform over Zoom knows, delays occur because transmission is mediated by the internet itself and the speed of individual computers. The result is time differences, discrepancies between the different strands of the broadcast which can be jarring. 

So, White Snake is using technology to create a solution. The various live broadcasts will be aligned (thanks to the work of Kansas City composer and sound designer Jon Robertson), and woven into a single whole (thanks to software from Virginia-based video engineer Andy Carluccio), which means that the resulting broadcast will be experienced in HD. Then there is video and CGI thanks to Curvin Huber, which adds another complex layer to the broadcast!

The performers will be soprano Carami Hilaire as Alice, counter-tenor Daniel Moody as the White Rabbit and mezzo-soprano Eva Gigliotti as Alice's mother, led by musical director Tian Hui Ng, with a pre-recorded accompaniment of strings, electronics and VOICES Boston children's choir. Music is by New York-based Mexican composer Jorge Sosa, and director is Elena Araoz.

Created by Cerise Jacobs, White Snake Projects creates contemporary American opera, combining music, cutting-edge technology, theatre and dance which debuted in 2016 with three new one-act operas, the Ouroboros Trilogy, to librettos by Jacobs with music by Zhou Long, Scott Wheeler and Paola Prestini.

Alice in the Pandemic premieres on 22 October 2020, full details from White Snake Projects.

LMP Reach: free on-line recitals for vulnerable groups

Live music for those in vulnerable communities is something which organisations have had to put on hold since the current crisis. To fill this gap, the London Mozart Players (LMP) has created LMP Reach, a community initiative that takes music, digitally, into these spaces. 

Members of the orchestra are filming a series of recitals specifically curated to entertain those living in care homes or at home with carers, those living with dementia, or people in vulnerable groups who may not otherwise have access to community concerts and events. Music enhances the emotional well-being and quality of life of people living and working in care homes, and LMP is delighted to play its part in bringing some joy into communities that have suffered during the pandemic.

Each LMP Reach recital is 30 minutes of music performed by two members of LMP, with everything from Wartime favourites and musical theatre to popular classics. The recitals are free to watch via a passworded link in Vimeo, and access is being offered to care homes, hubs, and centres across the borough of Croydon and further afield.

Full details from London Mozart Players website.

W11 Opera's Jukebox

W11 Opera's 2020 opera production has moved on-line as a result of the current crisis. Jukebox, the planned new opera, will be a celebration of 49 years of W11 Opera and will be streamed in December 2020. The opera will be created by a cast of young people (9-18 years) working on-line, thus offering them a unique creative opportunity. 

Rehearsals, training and activities will involve solo and small group Zoom sessions with the director (Susan Moore), musical director (Alastair Chilvers) and choreographer (Maggie Rawlinson) as well the visual artist (Chris Glynn) who will illustrate and animate portions of the final film. Production rehearsal videos will also be available online as well as design activities, monologue writing and filming, prop making workshops, vocal, drama, and dance sessions. ‘Rushes’ of the draft film footage will be viewed as a full group activity every few weeks as the recordings are completed.

W11 Opera's artistic director, Susan Moore has created the script and story for Jukebox, based on previous W11 Opera shows and the music draws from a number of these previous shows:

Timothy Kraemer (Ulysses & the Wooden Horse)
Russell Hepplewhite & Helen Eastman (The Price)
John Barber & Hazel Gould (Eliza & the Swans)
Stuart Hancock & Donald Sturrock (Cutlass Crew)
Julian Grant & Christina Jones (Original Features & Shadowtracks)
Graham Preskett & John Kane (Flying High & ANTiphony)
Cecilia McDowall & Christie Dickason (Deep Waters)
Guy Dagul & Jane Asperling (Game Over)

Full details from the W11 Opera website.

I give you the end of a golden string

 In 2018 the vocal ensemble Sansara, artistic director Tom Herring, performed Chris Williams' setting of a text by William Blake at the unveiling of a new tombstone for William Blake at Bunhill Fields. Williams set the text which had been put on the tombstone:

I give you the end of golden string;
Only wind it into a ball,
It will lead you in at Heaven's gate,
Built in Jerusalem's wall

Now the ensemble has returned to Williams' piece, joining forces with videographer Alex McEwen to create an interactive audio-visual experience. Audio recorded by the singers during lockdown has been used to create four separate audio tracks, each with their own accompanying video. Audiences are invited to create their own version of the piece by combining these four layers and exploring the possibilities of their infinite variation.

You can try it out at the work's website.

A digital pop-up festival lets us visit Gstaad Menuhin Festival virtually

Gstaad (Photo Destination Gstaad / Melanie Uhkoetter)

As a result of the current crisis, most arts organisations have developed their digital footprint, making much more of all those recorded performances sitting in the vaults. This has means not only that we can catch up on performances we would like to have seen, but can also digitally visit festivals that we otherwise might not have been able to.

The Gstaad Menuhin Festival has created the Gstaad Digital Festival website, which presents concerts and interviews from previous festivals, and this week it launched the Pop-Up Festival 2020 which takes place entirely on-line. I know it's not the same, sitting in your living room hunched over a lap-top hardly compares to visiting Switzerland (see image of Gstaad above), but on-line performances have their own rewards.

Things kicked off last night with Sir Andras Schiff in Beethoven, and Beethoven continues to be the focus in further live-streamed concerts including Sol Gabetta (cello) and Alexander Melnikov (fortepiano) in the cello sonatas, Daniel Behle (tenor) and Jan Schultsz (fortepiano) in the songs and Patricia Kopatchinskaja (violin) and Joonas Ahonen (piano) in the violin sonatas. There are also young artist programmes as part of the festival's Jeunes Etoiles; five young artists are giving on-line concerts and people are asked to vote and the artist getting the most votes will be invited to the 2021 festival.

You can read more about the festival in my 2019 interview with festival director Christoph Müller. Full details of the 2020 on-line festival from the website, and there is a separate Gstaad Digital Festival website. [Note that whilst the general festival website has an English version, the digital site seems to be only in German]

The Salzburg Festival & ARTE Concert celebrate the festival's centenary with daily live-streams

Richard Strauss: Elektra - Ausrine Stundyte (Elektra)
Salzburg Festival 2020 (Photo SF/ Bernd Uhlig)

The Salzburg Festival is celebrating its centenary this year, but inevitably celebrations are somewhat curtailed and muted. There is a scaled-down, socially-distant version of the festival in Salzburg, but for those unable or unwilling to travel, ARTE Concert is bringing the festival to us with daily live streams of performances.

Things kicked off on Saturday 1 August 2020, with a live-stream of Richard Strauss' Elektra (in Krzysztof Warlikowski's production, conducted by Franz Welser-Möst) followed by Mozart's Cosi fan tutte (in Christoph Loy's staging, conducted by Joana Mallwitz) on 2 August 2020.

For the next three nights (3-5 August 2020) sees pianist Igor Levitt giving the first part of his Beethoven piano sonata cycle, which continues next week. Also to come are performances from Ivor Bolton and the Mozarteum Orchestra in Mozart, the Belcea Quartet in Beethoven, Andris Nelsons and the Vienna Philharmonic in Mahler, Daniel Barenboim and the East-Western Divan Orchestra, Riccardo Muti and the Vienna Philharmonic in Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, recitals from soprano Sonya Yoncheva, violinist Renaud Capucon, pianist Marta Argerich, and much more.

Full details from the Arte.tv website.

Antipodeans in London: four alumni of Covent Garden's Jette Parker programme in recital from Australia House

Four alumni of Covent Garden's Jette Parker Young Artists Programme are coming together for a recital from Australia House in London, to be broadcast on the Melbourne Digital Concert Hall website on 4 August 2020, with the support of the Tait Memorial Trust. Sopranos Kiandra Howarth and Lauren Fagan, tenors Samuel Sakker and Filipe Manu (three Australians and a New Zealander of Tongan descent) will be accompanied by pianist Sergei Rybin in a programme of songs by Debussy, Strauss, Rachmaninov, Grieg, Tchaikovsky, Bellini, Poulenc and Respighi.

Kiandra Howarth won the second Grange Festival International Singing competition in 2019 [see my article], and you can also catch her in Respighi with Sergei Rybin recorded in the Crush Room at Covent Garden [Facebook]. Tenor, Samuel Sakker took second prize in the inaugural Grange Festival competition in 2017 [see my article] and he was Federico in Opera Holland Park's 2019 production of Cilea's L'Arlesiana [see my review]. Lauren Fagan was a great hit in the title role of Verdi's La traviata at Opera Holland Park in 2018 [see my review], and we saw Filipe Manu as Ramiro in Rossini's La Cenerentola at West Green Opera last year [see my review]. Sergei Rybin's work as a pianist includes a lovely disc of Rimsky Korsakov's neglected Romances with Anush Hovhannisyan and Yuri Yurchuk [see my review].

Their recital is being broadcast on Melbourne Digital Concert Hall on 4 August 2020 at 8.30pm AEST (which I think is 11.30am UK time), further details from the website.

ARTS OF FUGUE: Live music returns to St John's Smith Square

St John Smith Square
(Photos Michael Andrews)

During lockdown, St John's Smith Square developed its Digital Exchange project, a series of workshops, concerts and online advice and exchange sessions. These are now extending into live performances at the venue with ARTS OF FUGUE, concerts broadcast on-line from 4 August 2020, examining the development of fugue from its roots in the 16th century through the Baroque and Classical to the Romantic and beyond.

Each concert will feature approximately 25 minutes of music along with a discussion between Richard Heason, Director of St John’s Smith Square and the artists performing. On-line programme notes, providing interactive links, will be available to download from the St John’s Smith Square website before and after each concert.

For the first concert, The Gesualdo Six explore fugue's roots in 16th century Italy, including music by Ockeghem, Josquin des Prez and Jean Mouton, then organist David Titterington performs fugues by Bach, CPE Bach and Robert Schumann, along with a UK premiere from Calliope Tsoupaki. The Revolutionary Drawing Room performs Beethoven's Grosse Fugue, and finally Julian Jacobson performs Liszt's Piano Sonata in B minor.

Full details from the St John's Smith Square website.

Songs that were written in isolation, because of isolation, to be performed in isolation: The Isolation Songbook

Mezzo-soprano Helen Charlston's lockdown project has been collecting new songs. She conceived the idea of a songbook, 'songs that were written in isolation, because of isolation, to be performed in isolation?'.

Helen put out a call on social medial, and the Isolation Songbook was born, with a total of 15 poets and composers creating songs specially, including Ben Rowarth, Heloise Werner, Owain Park, Richard Barnard, Terence Charlston, Nathan Dearden, James Davy, Kerensa Briggs, Gerda Blok-Wilson, Joshua Borin, Elliot Park, Matthew Ward, Andrew Bixley Williams, Stephen Bick, and Derri Joseph Lewis.

There will be a chance to hear the result next week, when Helen along with baritone Michael Craddock and pianist Alexander Soares performs the Isolation Songbook for City Music Foundation's live from St Pancras Clock Tower recitals on Wednesday 29 July 2020 at 6pm. Full details from the CMF website.

The kids are going on-line: new initiatives from the National Children's Orchestra, and the National Youth Choirs

National Children's Orchestra

With the continuing uncertainty over live-performance, youth ensembles are going on-line. Both the National Children's Orchestras (NCO), and the National Youth Choirs of Great Britain (NYCGB) have announced on-line initiatives for this Summer and beyond.

The National Children's Orchestras has launched a new on-line initiative for its Summer 2020 course. A three-week digital programme has been created, in consultation with the children and their parents and the result is a highly varied series of webinars and on-line events with five categories of activity: Inspiration, Let's Create, My Instrument, Wellbeing and Pic'n Mix, with on-line guests including actors Bill Bailey and Tamsin Greig, film composer Rachel Portman, players from the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and London Mozart Players, and harpist Anne Denholm.

Currently, over 450 children, aged between 7 and 14 years old, have signed up to take part, and the course will culminate on 6 August 2020 with a special on-line multi-track Mambo concert. Full details from the NCO website.

The auditions for the National Youth Training Choir, National Youth Girls' Choir and the National Youth Boys' Choir will be taking place as usual this Autumn. Previous, auditions have been held in cities across the UK, but this year the auditions will be held on-line, via Zoom, so that children can audition from their homes.

National Youth Boys’ and Girls’ Choirs members are aged 9-14 and National Youth Training Choir members are aged 15-18, and these are just three of the choirs run by NYCGB, which is also home to the National Youth Choir and National Youth Chamber Choir for members aged over 18.

The auditions are open for booking from Tuesday 9 September 2020, and financial assistance is available to support those who require support with the cost of auditions and if offered a place the future ongoing costs of membership, courses and travel.

NYCGB is running a series of free online open events this August for anyone interested in finding out more about what it’s like to be a member of the National Youth Girls’, Boys’ or Training Choir. Further details will be announced shortly.

Full details from the NYCGB website.

National Youth Choirs of Great Britain