The Cool Web : A Robert Graves Oratorio

Tag: Philharmonia Voices

Introducing… the Philharmonia Voices

Philharmonia Voices sing Berlioz requiem at The Royal Festival Hall

On October 30th, The Cool Web will be sung by a 24 voice choir, hand-picked for this production, from Philharmonia Voices.

They will be jointed by Edward Grint, Soloist, and The Melody Makers of Bath Abbey.

Philharmonia Voices was formed by Aidan Oliver in 2004 to collaborate with the Philharmonia Orchestra on a huge range of repertoire. Since then the choir has established itself as one of the most exciting professional choruses in London, attracting consistently high praise from the critics for its performances with conductors including Esa-Pekka Salonen, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Lorin Maazel, Richard Hickox and John Wilson.

Notable triumphs have included performances of 20th-century masterpieces such as Stravinsky’s Oedipus rex and Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder (subsequently released as a critically lauded live recording), while major operatic milestones have included the European première of Shostakovich’s Orango and an acclaimed performance of Dallapiccola’s neglected Il prigioniero. At the lighter end of the repertoire, performances of Singin’ in the Rain, Yeomen of the Guard and Die Fledermaus have led to a burgeoning relationship with John Wilson, while Philharmonia Voices has also been central to the orchestra’s groundbreaking multi-media projects, including the award-winning touring installation ‘Universe of Sound’ and the first-ever screenings of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey with live soundtrack.

Under their director Aidan Oliver, Philharmonia Voices has also performed independently in festivals including Easter at King’s (King’s College Cambridge), the Roman River Festival (Essex), and the Tonbridge Arts Festival, presenting imaginatively themed programmes featuring actors including Simon Callow, Tim Pigott-Smith and Timothy West.

Their reviews have been of one voice:’ stunning’, ‘outstanding,”rapturous’ ..

.magnificently pungent choral effects that were virtuosically realised here by the young Philharmonia Voices.” – The Times on Graffiti

“The two choral interjections were stunning. A half-hearted semi-staging seemed unnecessary: Dallapiccola’s music and the singers said it all.” – The Telegraph on Il Prigioniero

“…electrifying choral singing” – The Guardian on Gurrelieder

Philharmonia Voices created a mirage of intoxicating sound.” – The Daily Telegraph on Death in Venice Recordings

Aidan Oliver

Aidan Oliver pursues a diverse career at the heart of London’s musical life, working variously as conductor, chorus master and music staff with organisations including the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Royal Opera House, English National Opera, and Westminster Abbey. A much sought-after choral conductor, he is increasingly active in the fields of opera and orchestral conducting.

For the Philharmonia Orchestra he directs Philharmonia Voices, an elite professional chorus which he founded and which collaborates with the orchestra on many of its most high-profile projects. Working particularly closely with the orchestra’s Principal Conductor, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Aidan has also collaborated with conductors including Ashkenazy, Maazel, Schiff, Dohnanyi and John Wilson. Aidan has worked as assistant conductor to Salonen on tours of Europe and the USA.

For the Royal Opera House, Aidan has worked as music staff on numerous productions, most recently as Assistant Conductor on Puccini Tosca, and as off-stage conductor and organist on productions including Peter Grimes, Il Trittico, Les Troyens and Robert le diable. For English National Opera, Aidan has prepared the Chorus for an acclaimed 2012 Proms performance of Peter Grimes, as well as productions of Fidelio and The Twilight of the Gods.

Aidan is the Associate Conductor of the St Endellion Summer Festival, where he has conducted performances ranging from Wagner Wesendonck Lieder with Rachel Nicholls (soprano) and Stravinsky L’Histoire du soldat with Rory Kinnear (narrator) to Brahms Ein Deutsches Requiem and Poulenc Gloria in Truro Cathedral. The Festival’s international status was established by Richard Hickox, whom Aidan assisted on numerous Chandos recordings and concert performances.

Aidan is one of the UK’s most respected choral conductors and choir trainers. He is Director of Music at St Margaret’s Church, Westminster Abbey, where the organist is Thomas Trotter and services include many high-profile occasions connected with Parliament. He has worked regularly with groups including the BBC Symphony Chorus, Exaudi, the New London Chamber Choir, and the BBC Singers, who awarded him one of their inaugural Conducting Fellowships. He is also the Musical Director of Dulwich Choral Society.

Aidan Oliver began his musical career as a chorister at Westminster Cathedral, later studying at Eton College and at King’s College Cambridge. After graduating with a double First in Classics, he pursued further studies at Harvard University (as a Kennedy Scholar), the National Opera Studio and King’s College London. He was the recipient of a Churchill Fellowship to study sacred choral music in Russia.

This is a brilliant young choir, like our soloist, Edward Grint, perfect for this oratorio, which, based on the work of a nineteen-year-old Robert Graves, and written by a young composer, is fresh, passionate, and electrifying.

Don’t miss it.

“

October 3, 2014
Introducing – The Melody Makers of Bath Abbey – the children singing in ‘The Cool Web’

The Melody Makers of Bath Abbey

We are delighted to introduce the performers who will sing the parts written for children’s voices in The Cool Web.

Their presence is very important to us, and central to the narrative of the oratorio, which not only focuses on the journey from the vivid responses of youth to the wariness of experience, but also returns again and again to both the joys and the nightmares of childhood.

Robert Graves, like so many of his contemporaries in the trenches, was only 19 when he arrived on the Somme; the memories of childhood were not far behind him, and a natural source of emotional reference for his poetry.

The Melody Makers will be singing in very distinguished company; under the baton of Robin O’Neill, they will join Endymion, Philharmonia Voices, and soloist Edward Grint in the first ensemble ever to perform this vibrant and exciting new oratorio.

We are so grateful to them for joining us; we know they will add that final touch of enchantment to what promises to be an exhilarating evening.

The Melody Makers were founded in January 2011 by Bath Abbey’s Assistant Director of Music, Shean Bowers. The group has grown consistently over the years and now has forty members from all over the city who regularly meet for music, song and friendship.

The choir sing a lively and varied repertoire which is accessible to all and always enjoyed by both the children singing it and those listening to it.

As well as one-off performances during the year, the youngsters also give a number of regular concerts, including a slot at the opening of Party in the City, they always turn out to give a warming rendition of carols at the Christmas market and never fail to delight at the Carols for Choir and Audience in the Abbey, where they get to sing alongside the Girls’ and Boys’ choirs too.

Shean Bowers with the Melody Makers

The group have travelled a fair amount in their short history, singing in places such as Salisbury and Gloucester Cathedrals and Stroud Town hall, as well as lending their voices to various performances, including Carmina Burana, Britten’s Friday Afternoons and even appearing BBC Radio 4.

Many of the children will go on to join the Bath Abbey Girls’ and Boys’ choirs when their time as a Melody Maker comes to an end, and it’s with great joy that we help them develop their singing to a point where this is achievable.

We can’t wait to hear them.

September 9, 2014
Introducing Robin O’Neill, The Conductor of ‘The Cool Web’

Robin O’Neill at the Wimbledon festival

As the time for the actual performance of the Oratorio grows near, we want to celebrate the people involved with the first performance of this new work.

Robin O’Neill has been part of this project from the very beginning.

Robin knew of Jools’ music from his sound-track to The Door, a short film by Andrew Steggall,

<a href="http://joolsscottmusic.bandcamp.com/album/the-door-original-sound-track">The Door – Original Sound Track by Jools Scott | Composer</a>

Andrew with Charles Dance, who starred in ‘The Door’

who directed The Soldier’s Tale at the Old Vic, (stay with me here)

The Soldier’s Tale at the Old Vic

for which Robin directed the music.

Commenting on Robin O’Neill’s work as music director of The Soldier’s Tale (in a European/Iraqi collaboration which took him to Baghdad in Sept 2005 and then on a two week run at the Old Vic Theatre) the late Sir Charles Mackerras said “I would like to congratulate Robin O’Neill on his marvellous conducting of the whole ensemble, whether European or Iraqi. I particularly admired the fact that a great deal of the Stravinsky seemed to be played from memory. This in itself is a tremendous feat!”

Iraqi musicians in The Soldier’s Tale

We met to discuss the project over lunch in London at the point where we had a rough idea of the libretto, but had written none of the music at all. Robin’s enthusiasm and genuine interest was one of the spurs which turned a good idea into a real piece of work.

Since then he has stayed faithfully with it, consulting on the score, pointing us in the direction of the right orchestra, Endymion, and the Philharmonia Voices, whose work he knows through his own long association with them, and now conducting it at Bath Abbey eighteen months after our first meeting.

The Philharmonia at the Royal Festival Hall

In the past few seasons Robin O’Neill has conducted the Philharmonia Orchestra and Chorus (with whom he gave the orchestra’s first performance in London’s newly refurbished Royal Festival Hall), London Philharmonic Orchestra, English Chamber Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra, Stavanger Symphony Orchestra, Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra, Trondheim Symphony Orchestra, Swedish Chamber Orchestra, Nordic Chamber Orchestra, City of London Sinfonia, Bogota Philharmonic, Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa Japan, Orchestra Cittaperta and the Orchestras of the Guildhall School of Music, Royal Academy of Music and the Royal College of Music, where he is professor of conducting.

Robin O’Neill’s conducting has been praised for it’s balance of intellectual rigour, immaculate line and visceral excitement. A performance of the Sibelius 7th Symphony prompted one reviewer to note that “he obtained a rock-like stability to the tonal structure that underpins the disturbances, thereby creating a symphonic statement both powerful and concise.”

Matthew Rye in the Daily Telegraph has commented: “Robin O’Neill conducted them (London Philharmonic) in sleek, suave performances where phrases were ideally shaped and balance nigh perfect” and the Financial Times has commented that: “Robin O’Neill conducted the brilliant Philharmonia Orchestra in faultless up-tempo style.”

Stephan Kovacevich

Robin O’Neill has collaborated with musicians such as Mikhail Pletnev, Boris Berezovsky, Mitsuko Uchida, Christoph Eschenbach, Pascal Roge, Stephen Kovacevich, Alexander Madzar, Pinchas Zuckerman, Salvatore Accardo, Isabelle Faust, Gautier Capucon, Michael Collins, Alina Ibragimova, the Lars Jansson Jazz Trio and actors such as Jeremy Irons, Julian Glover, Paul McGann and Hugh Dancy. He has also performed by invitation for His Royal Highness Prince Charles the Prince of Wales.

Jeremy Irons, who read the soldier in the first production of ‘The Soldier’s Tale’ Andrew Steggall directed at the Old Vic

Robin O’Neill regularly broadcasts on the BBC and has also had concerts broadcast on Swedish Radio, South African Radio and the Japan Broadcasting Corporation. He has made two CDs with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra on the Hyperion Label.

In his parallel career, Robin O’Neill is principal bassoonist with the Philharmonia Orchestra and has held the same position with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and the English Chamber Orchestra. He is a member of London Winds and the Gaudier Ensemble.

He is a Grammy nominated recording artist and has recorded virtually the whole of the core chamber music repertoire with more than 40 CDs to his name on labels such as Hyperion, Chandos, Decca and Philips.

Robin O’Neill is an Honorary Associate and Visiting Professor of Bassoon at the Royal Academy of Music in London. He has coached bassoon and wind sections for several summer festivals including Canton International Summer Music Orchestra in China, the Lindenbaum Festival in South Korea and the Adam Mickiewicz Iculture Orchestra in Poland.

And now, what an immense privilege it is to have him shaping and conducting the first performance of The Cool Web.

Don’t miss it.

September 6, 2014