What a pleasure to close the Hexham Abbey Festival on Sunday evening with our performance of Just One Of Those Things in the Queen’s Hall. A large and warm audience hummed and laughed along with Cole Porter’s evergreen melodies and delicious wordplay. What an extraordinary songwriter he was and what a delight to share his work not only with long-time fans, but with younger audience members who discovered that they knew many of his tunes.
Check back here soon for announcements of our next show dates.
Let’s Do It, the third show I have made with Paul Sheehan and Stephen Dickinson, premiered at Thaxted Festival on 21st June after a successful London preview on 13th July. Here’s a brief programme note about what we present in the performance:
Noel Coward was a phenomenal polymath, internationally successful as a performer, songwriter, playwright and director. Described by Time magazine as a blend of “cheek and chic, pose and poise”, his sartorial style and clipped speech were an integral part of his carefully curated persona. Born into a resolutely suburban family, his work showcases the glamour of the higher society to which he aspired. Famously tight-lipped about his own private life, he was frequently in trouble with the British censor for pushing the boundaries of what was acceptable on-stage.
His sixty-year career stretches from his professional debut as a child-actor, to his late, scene-stealing cameos on film and television. His songwriting talent first found its feet in traditional revue-style numbers; but in parallel with his career, a significant cultural exchange was underway between Britain and the United States. Already at the heart of theatrical Britain, Coward became central to this exchange of ideas, with three shows playing on Broadway and four in London during a single year. He knew everyone, socially and professionally. As well as influencing the work of other writers, he admired and was in turn influenced by them, formally collaborating or tipping his hat by referencing (or re-writing) other people’s songs. Let’s Do It charts the arc of Coward’s life and explores some of those relationships and collaborations with Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Kay Swift, Irving Berlin and Arthur Schwartz.
Tuesday 15th July 2.30pm Just One Of Those Things (Cole Porter) – Lichfield Festival, Staffs.
Tickets available here or via Box Office 01543 306271
Sunday 28th Sept 8pm Just One Of Those Things (Cole Porter) – Hexham Abbey Festival, Northumberland.
Tickets not yet on sale but will be available here
Additionally, for those in London, we will giving a preview performance of Let’s Do It! This will be on Friday 13th June at 7.30pm at St Paul’s Church, Wilton Place, London SW1X 8SH.
St Paul’s has been incredibly supportive of our projects over many years and funds from this performance will go to the church, so we encourage you to bring many friends.
I’m returning to Thaxted Festival on Saturday 21 June with my regular co-stars Paul Sheehan (baritone) and Stephen Dickinson (piano) in a rich programme of works from composers from the golden age of mid-twentieth-century popular song, centred around the complex personality of Noël Coward. Coward travelled to the US with the intention of making his fortune on Broadway as a playwright and songwriter and, although he is not usually considered part of the group whose songs became known as the Great American Songbook, Coward collaborated and partied with the best of them. Expect numbers such as: Mad about the Boy, Puttin’ on the Ritz, I Got Rhythm, Speak Low, If Love were All as well as songs by Kay Swift, whose relationship with George Gershwin was recently the subject of the BBC radio play Gershwin and Miss Swift.
I’ve recently been touring a couple of programmes dedicated to the work of Stephen Sondheim and Cole Porter respectively, presented through McCaldin Arts. These performances have been put together with my colleagues Paul Sheehan (baritone) and Stephen Dickinson (piano) at the invitation of Andrew Jenkins, Director of Thaxted Music Festival. Having presented each programme first at Thaxted, we have gone on to perform them at festivals in Cowbridge and Mayfield, as well as in Swindon Arts Centre, several London venues and, we expect, Lichfield Festival 2025.
We are currently working on a third programme, which we will be announcing to coincide with the Thaxted Festival programme release on 9 April. In the meantime if you’d like to know more about these soirées currently in our repertoire, please click here to see more.
Joe Fort, KCL Chapel Choir, Hanover Band and St Paul’s Knightsbridge soloists (image: Twitter)
Last night Clare joined The Choir of King’s College London and the Hanover Band in performing Bach’s monumental St Matthew Passion at St. John’s Smith Square. Director Joe Fort is also the director of music at St Paul’s Knightsbridge, in whose choir Clare holds a regular post. As designated soloist for Choir 1, Clare performed Können Tränen meiner Wangen.
Last night Clare McCaldin was the mezzo-soprano soloist in a mixed programme celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Ampthill Choral Society. Music by Vivaldi, Purcell and Mozart was performed in Ampthill Methodist Church.
Beethoven & Haydn at the Hexham Abbey Festival, Northumberland
Repeating a programme that had come to the North East last Autumn (pictured), Clare McCaldin returned to Northumberland to sing with the Bishopwearmouth Choral Society in a performance of Haydn’s Nelson Mass alongside three colleagues and on a bill that featured a favourite performer from the area, Bradley Creswick, playing Beethoven’s Violin Concerto.
In Sunderland Minster on this occasion, Haydn’s fulsome Te Deum was also on the programme and clearly enjoyed by performers and audience alike under the direction of conductor David Murray.
Clare McCaldin takes a curtain call with Steve Joyce Myall and the Bridgewater Sinfonia
It’s been an unrelentingly cold start to the year and the chill drove through into the start of March. It was going to take a special sort of concert to warm through St Peter’s Church, Berkhamstead… but, of course, that’s exactly what the Bridgewater Sinfonia managed to rustle up, under the clubbable direction of conductor Steve Joyce Myall.
The first half was a strong account of Brahms’ Violin Concerto, forging ahead under the bow of Nathaniel Anderson-Frank. Clare was involved in the ambitious second half performance of Mahler’s 4th Symphony, which scores its final movement with a high solo voice. The song Das himmlische Leben (The Heavenly Life) from Des Knaben Wunderhorn is an unburdened reflection on life on earth, which brings a particular glow to the previous, bucolic movements that the considerable and committed audience clearly appreciated.
