Cast The Madwoman Richard Robbins The Ferryman Ben Bevan The Traveller Ivo Almond The Abbot Tom Herring The Spirit James Bennett Chorus Philip Barrett Liam Connery Gethin Lewis

Chorus James Edwards Jevan McAuley Jonny Venvell

Chorus Basses Shaun Aquilina Max Loble

Production Team Producer / Musical Director Frederick Waxman Artistic Director Peter Thickett Set & Costume Designer Crispin Lord Lighting Designer Edward Saunders Marketing Manager Thea Waxman

Ante Terminum Productions

Benjamin Britten (1914 - 1976)

Several decades after his death, we have a more complete picture of Benjamin Britten as a composer than during his lifetime. Works from his youth and works that he suppressed have been played and published; the late music can now be seen as a distinct phase, in some ways as forward looking and as influential as Stravinsky’s. Above all, Britten’s central place in the history of 20th-century music seems more and more assured. He is one of very few composers born in the last century whose whole output - from to solo pieces - has gained a secure place in the repertoire.

Britten was born into a middle-class family in Lowestoft, Suffolk, on 22 November 1913. His mother encouraged him to learn the piano and the viola, and to compose; by the age of fourteen he had written over 100 works. Little of this abundant juvenilia has so far been heard, but Britten himself selected Five Waltzes for piano, composed between 1923 and 1925, for publication in 1969: they are not simply charming but have the feel of genuine music. In 1927 he began studying composition with Frank Bridge, and immediately made huge strides. The Quatre Chansons Françaises (1928) show an extraordinary sophistication both in the choice of texts and in the handling of the orchestra. A few years later he was writing chamber works, such as the Quartettino (1930) for string quartet, whose up-to-date musical language rivals anything being written in Britain at the time. The young Britten was iconoclastic, often scornful of his older, less gifted contemporaries; his music was brilliant and unsentimental. He was the cleverest composer around, and also the most musical.

Throughout the 1930’s and 1940’s Britten was tirelessly prolific; his opused works are far outnumbered by the vast quantity of incidental music of all kinds - for films, plays and especially BBC radio - that he produced with unflagging industry. His 1939 score for J.B.Priestley’s play, Johnson Over Jordan (1939), is a good example of the type of music that he was able to compose in a few days, yet with undiminished care and skill. The ‘Spider and the Fly’ (1939) movement shows his grasp of the popular musical idiom of the time, an interest that is fully evident in his first (1940), which sometimes uncannily anticipates Oklahoma! and contains some of the most invigorating music he ever wrote. Had he stayed in America, Britten might well have written Broadway hits as well as operas. As it was, his two years in America confirmed him as a tonal composer at a time when the idea of tonality was under threat - and had been questioned by Britten himself in some of his earlier music. The radiant diatonicism of (1939)- his first response to American light and space - symbolizes this fresh start. Britten’s last twelve years produced Curlew River (1964) and produced the opera (1973), which sums up the conflict of innocence and experience that obsessed him all his life; three for Rostropovich which are the finest since Bach; and a string quartet - no.3 - worthy to stand alongside Bartók. There is a special poignancy about the works of the final three years, composed after his unsuccessful heart operation: they bravely confront death, whether openly, as in (1975), or secretly, as in the last movement of the Suite on English Folk Tunes (1974) - a small masterpiece which, even if nothing else of Britten’s were to survive, would mark him as a great composer. Synopsis

The parable is told by four ’stock’ characters and The boy was beaten by this master and then a chorus, who, in the tradition of theatre are abandoned by the river. Local people cared for all men: the Abbot, who is also the narrator, the the sick child, who, clearly dying, made a last Ferryman, the Traveller and the Madwoman. request. “Please bury me here, by the path to this Curlew River opens with a processional of the chapel. Then, if travellers from my dear country Abbot and his monks to the hymn Te lucis ante pass this way, their shadows will fall on my grave, terminum. The Abbot explains to the congregation and plant a yew tree in memory of me.” For the of a time not long ago when “a sign was given of people who live along the river the boy’s grave is God’s grace … in our reedy Fens … [where] the sacred, “… some special grace is there, to heal Curlew River runs.” The monks who are to play the sick in body and in soul”. the Ferryman, the Traveller and the Madwoman are ceremonially dressed in their robes, the All now understand the boy who died is the son pilgrims take their places and the story begins. for whom the Madwoman is searching. “O Curlew River, cruel Curlew, where all my hope is The Traveller and the Madwoman have come to swept away.” The Ferryman tries to console her. cross the Curlew River, which ‘”lows between “Your sad search is ended.” And he and the two realms”. The Madwoman, a noble woman, Pilgrims lead the grief-stricken mother to her has journeyed eastwards from the Black son’s tomb. Mountains in search of her child, kidnapped 12 months ago. The Ferryman and pilgrims mock As all pray the voice of the dead boy suddenly her at first, demanding she entertain them with echoes their chant, Custodes hominum psallimus her singing, but when she asks them an ancient Angelos. Alone now, the mother suddenly sees the riddle “Wild birds of the Fenland, though you spirit of her son. “Go your way in peace, mother. float or fly, wild birds, I cannot understand your The dead shall rise again and in that blessed day cry; Tell me does the one I love in this world still we shall meet in heaven.” Freed from her grief live” they are chastened, and let her aboard. and with her wits restored, the Mother kneels in a prayer that ends with a joyous emblematic As they begin their crossing, the Ferryman stops “Amen”, the final note of which resolves into a poling his boat. “Today is an important day, the long-delayed unison with the full cast – a signal people are assembling in memory of a sad event.” of her return and acceptance. The actors in the He tells the story. On this day a year ago, a young drama are disrobed and as monks now hail “a boy arrived in the area with a vicious master who sign of God’s grace.” “In hope, in peace, ends had abducted him from his home near the Black our mystery” intones the Abbot. And the Mountains. company process away from the centre of the church once again singing the hymn Te lucis ante terminum.

Curlew River was a compositional turning point for Britten, marking a change to a sparer style of writing, with greater rhythmical independence between parts and more use of heterophony. He had made use of both of these techniques previously: the former notably in The , and The Prince of the Pagodas; and the latter in St Nicholas, but here they are employed to a far greater extent. Throughout the piece, subgroups of instruments and voices in the ensemble play at different tempi, musically desynchronising and necessitating the invention of a new notational device, the ‘curlew sign’ below, first appearing in the score at The Travellers’s entrance. A note is held or a phrase repeated at this sign until the parts resynchronise.

In the opera, some typically Britten-ish ideas are used. Instruments are paired with characters; The Abbot and chorus with the organ, the Madwoman with the flute, the Ferryman with the horn, and The Traveller without any stable instrumental (or harmonic) home (which is the kind of glib-sounding idea which only in the hands of Britten is most masterfully realised). Similarly, motifs are paired with concepts, the most obvious example being the ‘Curlew Motif’ below, others (other than the ‘character’ music) include the ‘Riddle Motif’, and the pentatonic nursey rhyme-like melody which occurs twice, first near the start, when The Madwoman sings of her maternal love for her child, and again at the end, when the miracle occurs - the flute is transformed into a piccolo and the spirit of her dead child is seen.

Curlew River is Britten’s first ‘serious’ opera since The Turn of the Screw, a decade previously (Noye’s Fludde does come between the two), and in addition to those familiar ideas used in his earlier operas we hear the effect of two major new influences, derived from this libretto but going on to permeate the rest of his oeuvre. Those influences are the music he heard when in Japan, on the holiday during which he saw Sumidagawa, and that of medieval English music. The Japanese influence is necessitated by the source of the material, and the medieval by Plomer’s transformation of the story into an English mystery play - the setting the Fens, and the birds curlews.

A Noh drama is accompanied by the hayashi, instrumentalists who play four kinds of instrument - the nōkan (transverse flute), the ōtsuzumi or ōkawa (hip-drum), the kotsuzumi (shoulder-drum) and the taiko (stick-drum). The percussion writing - untuned drums engaging in dialogue, and flute writing with pitch bends and acciacaturas - are transformations of the music of Noh, but Britten draws from other Japanese influences too. The gagaku ((literally 'elegant music', imported from Tang dynasty China to the Japanese imperial court) he heard influenced his writing, the harp part is influenced by what he heard of the koto, and the chamber organ part by the shō, a kind of mouth organ with 17 pipes (a specimen of which he acquired in Tokyo). The first chord in the organ part is a direct transcription of the chord bō. But, the music isn't pastiche; the ensemble is expanded beyond these instruments, and the harmony very much Western,

The medieval influence can be itself be divided into two parts: firstly, the modal harmony particularly using the melodic minor, up and down the last three notes of the scale (distinctly in both The Ferryman’s and The Madwoman’s opening bars, but throughout the piece); and secondly, the ‘unmetred’ feel of plainchant, here executed via the curlew sign to amazing destabilising effect.

For me, the remarkable thing about the score is that despite its apparently very synthetic composition, analysis reveals it to be constructed with the same arsenal of compositional techniques that Bach and Beethoven used - motivic augmentation, diminution, etc—and it manages, without fail, to be totally, dramatically perfect.

Frederick Waxman, Musical Director and Producer Curlew River marked a quilting point in the development of Britten’s musical style, paving the way for the ‘orientalism’ that was to pervade his work right up until his death. Taking his inspiration from Japanese Noh drama, which he encountered during his concert tour of the Far East in 1955, Curlew River emerged as a work poised for the exploration of new dramatic opportunities. Above all of his works, it is perhaps the most intensely symbolic, with each of the main characters representing a well-worn universal archetype, identifiable throughout both myth and history. It is this symbolic presentation of the characters that adds to the great mystery of the piece - their pasts, their pains, their motivations remain largely unexplored. As if suspended in a dream, we enter a world that seems completely removed from all conception of dramatic time and historical context where the characters themselves are merely projections. The audience are thus encouraged to explore who these characters might really be and why their fates seem so indelibly intertwined.

Beyond its life on the stage, Curlew River seems to have resonated deeply with aspects of Britten’s own life. It feels not to be a coincidence that the figure of the dead child - a motif that obsesses so much of Britten’s work (, , Turn of the Screw) - drives the whole dramatic impetus of the piece, ultimately enabling some sense of resolution, however tragic. It is in the spectral voice of this child that I have always found the greatest mystery - that in the face of insufferable pain and the inevitability of loss, acceptance and peace might somewhere finally be found. Peter Thickett, Artistic Director

When starting the design process, I was particularly keen to stay true to the Noh drama roots of the opera. The traditional Japanese Noh stage consists of a bare wooden stage, a long ramp along one side and a painted backdrop of a tree. These three elements gave me all I needed to make use of the space in the church. By using the full length of the space, I wanted to create a sense of the journey from East to West on which the narrative relies. In expanding the idea of a tree backdrop into something that included dead branches that reach towards the grave, the journey became one also of life to death. My choice to use a combination of cotton and polyethene as the main set materials was inspired by a line sung by the Madwoman at the start of the opera: “all is clear but unclear too”. The translucent nature of the materials seemed to fit with the character’s quest for peace, truth and understanding, especially with the way they respond to light and pick up shadows.

With Britten’s troubling relationship to innocence and Christianity, it made more sense to make a feature of the altar’s shadow, rather than the altar itself. Ditto the child. The same sense of ambiguity extended to the costume design too: with gender-fluid costumes and abstract make-up, the characters were able to speak as archetypes rather than as individuals, even though they communicate a variety of complex human emotions. The nature of mask theatre (of which Noh is an example) is such that the body as a whole, its movement, its physical appearance, attests to its character. If you cannot read just the face, you must read the gestural language of the body and the way it is presented and how that relates to the character. The monochromatic palette of the design as a whole is reflective of this attitude. Crispin Lord, Set & Costume Designer

This summer, Richard took part in the Oxford Lieder Mastercourse, covered the role of Middle Son in Judith Weir’s The Vanishing Bridegroom for British Youth Opera, and covered a role and sung in the chorus with Longborough Festival Opera in performances of Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde and Beethoven’s Fidelio. He has also been working on the inaugural Fellowship programme at St Martin in the Fields, touring Minneapolis and Washington DC with the group.

Lately, he has performed with The Hanover Band, The Southbank Sinfonia and the Academy of Ancient Music and his recent performances include oratorio, opera and concert work in venues including St. Martin-in-the-Fields; King's Place; Hackney Empire and The National Portrait Gallery.

Upcoming projects include solo performances of Bach’s B Minor Mass with The Academy of St Martin in the Fields and Beethoven’s Mass in C with Richard Robbins the London Mozart Players and ensemble performances, including an electronica infused The Madwoman version of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas with Festival Voices. Richard has also been appointed to the

talent scheme for 2017/18 with Handel House. Richard Robbins graduated with First Class

Honours from Royal Holloway, and for the last two Richard is also a conductor - he is the MD of Egham years he studied Vocal Performance on the Choral, The Vine Singers and for Music in Offices. He postgraduate course at the Royal Academy of also organises and leads singing workshops for adults Music, currently studying with Amanda and young people. Next year he will run workshops Roocroft. He continues to be sponsored by The for Leeds Lieder Music Festival and for Wokingham Richard Stapley Trust, The Devon Educational Choral Society. Additionally, over the summer, Trust and The Veronica Awdry Foundation, and Richard spearheaded the campaign to Save the won the Rhonda Jones Scholarship upon graduation National Musicians’ Church from shutting its doors to from the RAM. musicians.

Benjamin Bevan won a scholarship to study at the Guildhall School, London and made his international début at Lausanne Opera in La Cenerentola.

Benjamin made his debut at The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden singing Henry Cuffe in by Benjamin Britten and returned to sing Die Sprecher in Die Zauberflöte. He made his debut at The Royal Danish Opera as Lescaut in Boulevard Solitude by Henze, a role he also sang at Welsh National Opera as well as the title role of Roderick in Usher House by Gordon Getty. In 2016 he sang Ferryman in Curlew River for Opéra de Dijon. At Scottish Opera Benjamin sang Marcello in La Bohème, Fleville and Fouquier-Tinville in Andrea Chenier under Sir Richard Armstrong, Riccardo in I Puritani, Lescaut in Massenet’s Manon and Marcello in La Bohème. He sang Il Conte in Le Nozze di Figaro in the critically acclaimed production at the Benjamin Bevan 2016 Longborough Festival.

The Ferryman On the concert platform, Benjamin has recently made his debut at Internationale Händel-Festspiele

Göttingen with Wroclaw Baroque and in Norway 2017 was an exciting year for Benjamin with The Stavanger Symphony Orchestra under Bevan. Following his debut in the USA with The John Butt. He performs regularly with Bach Colorado Symphony he travelled to Japan to make Collegium Japan whilst other engagements have his first recording with Masaaki Suzuki and the included performances of Bach’s St Matthew Bach Collegium Japan as they venture into the Passion and Handel’s Messiah with the Royal world of Beethoven. Benjamin also made his debut Northern Sinfonia under Paul McCreesh and in Italy with the ground breaking 18th Century Thomas Zehetmair, Bach’s B Minor Mass at The music specialists Collegio Ghislieri in Pavia. In the Three ’s Festival. and a performance of Bach’s UK he worked with The BBC Philharmonic for the Cantata BWV 206 at St John’s Smith Square in first time. London to mark the 70th anniversary of the London Bach Society.

Ivo is an English Baritone currently studying at the Royal College of Music with Stephen Roberts. He has given recitals in the City of London, Greater London and Durban of English, German and Italian Art Song repertoire. He has also appeared as a soloist in The Messiah (with the HA Choral Society and at the Bromley and Sheppard’s College), Schubert’s Mass in Ab and Puccini’s Messa di Gloria with the Ealing Common Choir, and other works with in and around London.

Ivo has sung the roles of Demetrius in Britten’s Midsummer Night’s Dream and Monostatos in Mozart’s The Magic Flute with Southgate Youth Opera, the role of Sid in Britten’s with St. Peter’s Opera in Oxford and of The Headkeeper in The Elephant Angel by Gareth Williams with Cromarty Youth Opera. He has also sung the roles of Il Notaio and Spinelloccio in Ivo Almond Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi and been a chorus member with The Westminster Opera Company where he The Traveller was part of the Young Artists scheme.

Ivo has also enjoyed choral singing as a choral scholar at Southwark Cathedral and in freelance choirs in London, Oxford, Washington DC, New York, Durban, Geneva, Riga and recently Moscow and St. Petersburg under conductor Peter Phillips.

Tom Herring is a freelance -baritone and conductor based in London. He is a graduate of Merton College, Oxford, where he achieved a First Class degree in Music and was a Choral Scholar. He is the bass soloist on the 2015 recording of Oliver Tarney’s Magnificat (Convivium Records) and performed at the London première at Cadogan Hall. Other solo appearances include performances of Handel’s Messiah (Instruments of Time and Truth), Bach’s Magnificat (East Anglian Academy, Suffolk Bach Choir), St Matthew Passion and St John Passion, Mozart’s Requiem and Vesperae solennes, and Fauré’s Requiem. Operatic roles include Aeneas in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, and, in operas by Britten, Collatinus in and Arthur Jones in with Sir John Tomlinson, Mark Padmore and Roderick Williams. Tom Herring Alongside regular appearances with several professional church choirs, Tom has sung with The Abbot professional ensembles including Contrapunctus, Stile Antico, Vox Luminis and the Tallis Scholars. Tom is the Artistic Director and General Manager of the award-winning choir and consort, Sansara (www.sansarachoir.com).

James was born in 2005, making him the correct age for the role. He started singing at the Temple Church James Bennett Choir in 2013, where he was made Deputy Head Chorister in 2017. He studies the cello at the Junior The Spirit Academy. James attends the City of London School for Boys, where he plays an active part in the musical life of the school. As a chorister he has sung a number of solos, including Balulalow from Britten's Ceremony of Carols and the solo from the Britten’s Te Deum.

Chorus

Philip Barrett Phil studied Music and King’s College, Cambridge, where he was a choral scholar. He worked as a producer for In Tune on Radio 3 for two years, and is now an assistant for City Music Foundation.

Liam Connery Liam studied Music at Christ Church College, Oxford, where he was a choral scholar . He now is a Graduate Music Assistant at Whitgift School and a lay clerk at Croydon Minster.

Gethin Lewis Gethin played the title role in Britten’s Albert Herring as a student at GSMD (graduating 2014) and was recently Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni with HGO. He has performed as soloist in Handel’s Messiah, Mozart’s Requiem, and Mendelssohn’s Hymn of Praise, and as an ensemble member in Bach’s St Matthew Passion at the National, and Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas as part of the Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme. He has won the Welsh, Operatic and Lieder solo categories on more than once in the National Eisteddfods of Wales.

James Edwards James is a Baritone in his final year of undergaduate studies at the GSMD where he studies under the tutelage of John Evans.

Jevan McAuley Jevan studied at GSMD. Recent highlights include covering Morales in Carmen for The Grange Festival, playing Guglielmo in Così fan Tutte for Opera Holloway and King’s Head Theatre, Tom, in Un Ballo in Maschera for Iford Arts and Sid in Albert Herring at the GSMD. Upcoming performances include covering Achilla in Handel’s Giulio Cesare for Bury Court Opera, as well as covering both Pallante in Agrippina and Fiorello in Il Barbiere di Siviglia for The Grange Festival.

Jonny Venvell Jonny graduated from St Catherine’s College, Cambridge, in 2015, where he read music, sang with Sydney Sussex choir, and studied oboe with Nicholas Daniel. He now works as Head of Musicians for Encore, an online musician booking platform he helped set up. He regularly sings with the Renaissance Singers and Façade Ensemble.

Shaun Aquilina Shaun studied at the RAM. His operatic roles include Figaro in The Marriage of Figaro and Dandini in La Cenerentola, both for Kennet Opera; Leporello in Don Giovanni with Opera Loki); Masetto for HGO and Opera Seria; Mr Gedge in Albert Herring, HGO); and Germano in La Scala di Seta for Opera Holloway). He is a regular member of the chorus of Opera Holland Park, and will cover the role of Guglielmo in Cosi Fan Tutte, this summer. He also sings with the Philharmonia Chorus and is a bursary member of the Ionian Singers.

Max Loble Max is in the third year of a BMus at the RAM, and was a music scholar at University College School 2007- 2014 as a cellist, though he played the title role in Le Nozze di Figaro. Max has performed in operas and recitals, including for the ‘RAM/Kohn Foundation Bach Cantata Series’, and as a soloist for choral societies including in Beethoven’s Choral Fantasia, Faure’s Requiem, Mozart’s C minor Mass and Coronation Mass, Handel’s Messiah, Dvorak’s Mass in D and the role of Pilatus in Bach’s St John Passion. Orchestra

Flute Thomas Sargéaunt Thomas is a London based flautist and flute maker. He recently completed an MA at RAM after being an undergraduate at Goldsmiths. As an undergraduate, he was principal flute of Goldsmiths Sinfonia and Chamber Orchestra. There he won the University Concerto Competition in 2012 and played Mozart’s Concerto for Flute and Orchestra in G Major with the Sinfonia. In 2013, he won a Jellinek Award with Guildford Symphony Orchestra which led to a performance of Vivaldi’s Flute Concerto in C minor. He made his Purcell Room debut in 2013 playing Berio’s Sequenza I and Canzona di Ringraziamento by Salvatore Sciarrino.

Horn Maude Wolstenholme Maude is currently in her fourth year at the Royal Academy of Music where she is a recipient of the F. G. Fitch Bequest Scholarship. Prior to studying at RAM she attended Chetham's school of music in Manchester.

Viola Nicholas Hughes Nic is currently in his fourth year at the RCM, studying with Yuri Zhislin. He has played with groups including the Janus Ensemble and Orion Orchestra, and in masterclasses with Maxim Rysanov, Jennifer Stumm, Alina Ibragimova, and Leonid Kerbel. He was recently awarded a scholarship to study at GSMD for his Masters. He plays on a 1961 William Luff generously on loan to him from the RCM.

Double Bass Jess Ryan Until last year, Jess was a student at Guildhall School of Music and Drama with Kevin Rundell. Since graduating, she now freelances with major professional orchestras throughout the UK and is currently on trial with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.

Harp Tomos Xerri Tomos studied at the junior RWCMD and was a music scholar at Eton College. He was awarded scholarships for his undergraduate and masters degrees at Trinity Laban, and also won the John Marson Prize for outstanding musician. He has performed solo at the Wigmore Hall, St John's Smith Square, the 1901 Arts Club and St Martin-in-the-Fields, and has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3. He won a Philharmonia Orchestra Instrumental Fellowship for 2017-18, and works freelance with orchestras across the UK. Tomos performed live on BBC News at the opening of the Cutty Sark in Greenwich, and performs with Claire Wickes in the flute & harp duo Siren, as well with Live Music Now! He recently performed 11 world premieres as part of The Riot Ensemble, and has commissioned many new works for the harp.

Percussion Tom Highnam Tom is now in his third year studying percussion at the RAM, where he is a scholar. Before going to the Academy, he was in the BBC Young Musician of the Year Percussion final. Last year he was a participant in the LSO percussion academy where he was involved in a week of masterclasses, lessons, and performances.

Chamber Organ Frederick Waxman

Frederick Waxman Peter Thickett Producer / Musical Director Artistic Director

Frederick Waxman has recently graduated with a Peter is a young director and writer working in degree in Experimental Psychology from University London. He is a graduate of Merton College, College, Oxford, where he was an Academic Oxford, where he achieved a first class honours Exhibitioner (Proxime Accessit to the Susan Mary degree in music under the guidance of Professor Rouse Memorial Prize), Choral Scholar, and Daniel Grimley. In 2016, he received a research Instrumental Scholar. With the Martlet Ensemble, grant from the Britten-Pears Foundation to pursue an initiative by Director of Music Giles Underwood his thesis on ‘Structures of Desire in the Operas of for giving students performance opportunities with Benjamin Britten’, whilst also directing The Rape of professionals, he performed on the oboe a concert Lucretia and Albert Herring with St Peter’s Opera of Bach Cantatas (BWV 78, 82, 156, 159) and Company. Peter is interested in the intersection another of Finzi's Interlude, and with the Martlet between queer lives and art and how this transpires Voices, a set of Wolf part-songs. During his time at within the fabric of music and performance. He has Oxford, he also recited Walton's Façade with Hilary recently undertaken studies in Jungian psychology Davan Wetton, and co-directed a production of where he cultivates a particular interest in the Britten’s Albert Herring. He frequently accompanies relationship between sexuality and the physical singers, most recently in concert with Ivo Almond, landscape. His poetry explores the nature of who plays The Traveller in Curlew River. He studies dreams, memory and childhood - taking his musical direction with Howard Williams, and in the influence from the work of Billy Collins and Wayne autumn 2018 is beginning an MMus at GSMD in Koestenbaum. oboe.

Crispin Lord Edward Saunders Set and Costume Designer Lighting Designer Crispin is a young Director and Designer working in Ed is an award-winning lighting designer. Starting London, having recently graduated from Durham out life as a followspot operator at the Oxford University where he studied Music. His interest in Playhouse, Ed began lighting shows in black box Opera started at the age of 11, when he performed in theatres as a student of New College, Oxford the children’s chorus for a variety of Royal Opera (reading languages) before scaling up to design for House and Glyndbourne productions including full-size venues across the UK and abroad. His most Carmen, Tosca, Hansel und Gretel and The Queen of Spades. recent work was with a touring production of Peer Over the following three years he sang a number of Gynt (Gruffdog, 2017), for which he received a solo roles, including Shepherd Boy in Tosca with Opera commendation for design by the National Student Holland Park, Cobweb in A Midsummer Night’s Drama Festival. Dream at the Royal College of Music, and Miles in The Turn of the Screw at Snape Maltings. Whilst studying for his degree he directed three productions with the Earlier credits include an international touring Durham Opera Ensemble: Carmen, Orpheus ed production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (OUDS Euridice and a selection of opera scenes connected by with Thelma Holt, 2016) of the UK and Japan, an original narrative entitled The Voyage: Scenes of Travel. Fatzer (Di Trevis, June 2016), Rhinoceros (Gruffdog, After graduating, he was with Universal Music for a May 2016), and Ballyturk (Straightface, March 2016). year as a Publicist, but now works solely as a Designer Curlew River will be Ed’s first design for opera, and and Director. His most recent credits include Assistant presents a particularly exciting opportunity for a site- Director for Written on Skin (Melos Sinfonia) and The specific lighting design. Lighthouse (Shadwell Opera), and has held observerships at English National Opera, Erratica, and The Place. He is also Artistic Director of MaloMalo, a contemporary queer performing arts organisation. In 2018, he will travel to Glasgow to observe with Scottish Opera on Flight and Greek, to Cardiff with National Opera Studio as Assistant Director on their Welsh National Opera residency, and to Malta as Assistant Director on Don Giovanni at the Manoel Theatre.

She still performs regularly with City of London Choir, with recent concerts at the Royal Albert Hall, Cadogan Hall, and St John’s Smith Square, and sings jazz.

Her marketing experience began in committee roles with the Oxford Energy Society and Oxford University Geological Society, before employment as Marketing Assistant for Oxford Lieder Festival. Having worked as a consultant for the world-leading catastrophe modelling company, RMS, Thea is now pursuing a career in science communication. She is particularly interested in museums and festivals as dynamic spaces that bring science to life, and has worked for New Scientist Live, Berlin Science Week, volunteer curated for London’s Natural History Museum, is currently undertaking an internship with the Science Museum’s Contemporary Science Research team, as well as co-organising this year’s Creative Reactions festival with Pint of Science. She is Thea Waxman an active member of Crossmodalism, delivering events and managing communications for the 1000-strong Marketing Manager London community.

Thea studied Earth Sciences at St. Peter’s College, A long-time Britten fanatic, Thea is excited to be Oxford, graduating with a first class for her Master’s involved in the project at the genesis of this exciting research. As a Choral Scholar, she enjoyed regular solo new production company. roles including Belinda in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas with St. Peter’s College Opera.

Returning after a hugely successful inaugural year, St John's Smith Square and Tenebrae are delighted to announce the Holy Week Festival running from 26 March – 1 April 2018. St John’s Smith Square will host workshops, ticketed concerts and free late-night liturgical events exploring a vast range of sacred music in celebration of Holy Week.

With Thanks To

Hudson Sandler

Nicholas Riddle

Margaret Steinitz

Christopher Fletcher Campbell

Cecilia Reeve

Calam Lynch

Seamus Lavan

Tony Henwood

And everyone at St Bartholomew-the-Great