Blog

Revolution!

I’m off to the Stroud Festival later this month for a concert with two of my long-time friends and collaborators, Paul Sheehan and Paul Turner. This year’s Festival is themed on Revolution in the Arts so we have created a new programme exploring this idea in three dimensions – aesthetic, harmonic and socio-political. Inevitably there’s a lot of overlap but we will be offering everything from Beethoven to Cathy Berberian, via Ravel, Wagner and Weill. It’s a terrific range of repertoire, full of interesting juxtapositions, and we think that even the most knowledgeable members of our audience will make discoveries.

As the concert is taking place on the day when the UK may or may not be leaving the European Union, Revolution seems a very appropriate theme and we are assuming that anything could happen!

Tickets available via the Stroud Festival website: https://stroudfestival.org/

Happy 25th Birthday!

The Swindon Recital Series celebrated its 25th year on Sunday evening. It’s a remarkable achievement to have sustained this strand of high-quality music-making in the face of many local pressures on the classical music audience. The celebratory concert featured series founder and artistic director Paul Turner, with other performers who have been regular contributors over the years.

Music of Renown Ensemble

Members of the Music Of Renown Ensemble performed with me in a reprise of William Walton’s Façade, which we first presented in 2012.

with Paul Turner

Paul and I also performed a much-loved staple of our recital repertoire, A History of the Thé Dansant by Richard Rodney Bennett. The jazz theme was maintained with Schulhoff’s “hot” saxophone sonata and an arrangement of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue for the same forces as Façade.

Here’s to another 25 glorious years!

St John Passion, St Paul’s Knightsbridge cond. Papadopoulos

Clare McCaldin rehearses JS Bach’s St John Passion at St Paul’s, Knightsbridge. Photo: spkb.org

On Saturday, I took part in a performance of JS Bach’s St John Passion BWV 245 at St Paul’s Church, Knightsbridge, an in-house performance of the work. The professional church choir, of whom I am one of the altos, shared the solo arias as step-outs: I sang Von den Stricken meiner Sünden. Director of Music Stephen Farr played continuo with music scholar & cellist Finlay Spence and an orchestra of instrumentalists from the associated Royal College of Music was directed by Assistant Organist Michael Papadopoulos.