Helen Lawrence News
British singer
- United Kingdom
- singer, opera singer
Last update
2024-03-21
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2024-02-09 09:16:00
Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama celebrates its 75th anniversary with plans to restore and revitalise Cardiff's historic Old Library
Cardiff Free Library - photo by Bettia's puppet - Own work, Public DomainThe Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama will be celebrating its 75th birthday throughout this year. A year long programme of events will highlight its transformational journey since it started at Cardiff Castle in 1949 and draw attention to the work it does to innovate, champion collaboration, work with communities and empower excellence in all its many forms.This week there was an added sense of celebration as the college had a public engagement day (on 7 February 2024) to present the reimagining of the latest addition to the college's campus, Cardiff’s historic Old Library, originally the Cardiff Free Arts School and Library. The college has successfully bid for a 99-year lease on the building which opened in 1882 to house Cardiff Free Library and has had a variety off uses since then. The plans, produced in partnership with architects Flanagan Lawrence, will […]
2023-12-30 09:32:00
2023 in concert reviews: Gavin Higgins x2, Allan Clayton's Samson, Reginald Mobley in Bayreuth, the Pink Singers & Brixton Chamber Orchestra both party and Bitches Brew is back
Gavin Higgins: Beano Concerto - George Jackson, Colin Currie, BBC Concert Orchestra - Royal Festival Hall (Photo: BBC / Mark Allan)Our list begins and ends with community events. The year began with a fragment of my own musical history, the Pink Singers, an ensemble I directed for five years in the 1980s, celebrated their 40th anniversary. Then in December, our local ensemble, the Brixton Chamber Orchestra certainly put us in party mood.Both Handel and Bach feature, of course. In April Peter Whelan and the Irish Baroque Orchestra explored the original Dublin version of Messiah, whilst in December, Wild Arts presented a more traditional edition in an imaginative, intimate semi-staging. Allan Clayton joined Lawrence Cummings and the Academy of Ancient Music for Handel's Samson at the Proms. We heard Bach's St Matthew Passion with the choir of Kings College, London and Bach's Easter Oratorio from Florilegium. Vox Luminis brought sheer musicality to […]
2023-12-18 05:30:00
KN's Favorite Recordings of 2023
[…] poem by Walt Whitman (from Song of the Open Road) celebrating the human spirit’s capacity for generosity and growth. It was commissioned by the United States Air Force Band and here receives its world premiere recording. We then arrive at the album’s main attraction, The Sacred Veil, which Whitacre composed along with his friend and frequent collaborator Charles Anthony Silvestri, who wrote most of the lyrics, which revolve around the death from cancer of his late wife, Julia Lawrence Silvestri (the remainder of the lyrics were written by Whitacre and Ms. Silvestri before her passing). As you might surmise from those circumstances, The Sacred Veil is an intensely personal, deeply moving composition. The Sacred Veil was originally conceived for a larger choir. In fact, the first recording of it, which Whitacre himself conducted (reviewed here), featured the larger forces of the Los Angeles Master Chorale. So what we have here in this Decca release is in essence […]
2023-12-06 05:00:00
Love, Music, and Secrets: Carey Mulligan Shines in ‘Maestro’ – A Riveting Tale of Leonard Bernstein’s Life
By Lawrence Toppman Watching the impressionistic, free-form “Maestro,” I felt as if I were attending one of the chaotic parties Leonard Bernstein loved to host. Celebrities pass by, identified by one name or none. Snatches of conversation hint at secrets and revelations. We drop in and out of people’s lives, without always knowing why they matter. Your
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