Blog

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.

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.

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.

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.