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Elin Manahan Thomas – Soprano Elin Manahan Thomas has sung since an early age. A member of the National Youth Choir of Wales whilst at school, she won a Choral Scholarship to Clare College, Cambridge, where she completed an undergraduate and postgraduate degree in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic before embarking on a professional singing career. Elin regularly performs as a soloist: her repertoire includes Carissimi’s Jephthe, Bach’s Christmas Oratorio and St Matthew Passion, Haydn’s Creation, Handel’s Saul and Acis and Galatea, Mozart’s Mass in C Minor and Vespers, works by Schubert, Schumann, Debussy and Strauss, as well as contemporary music by composers John Woolrich, Judith Weir and Sir John Tavener (whose latest work Shunya she recently premiered at his 60th birthday concert). The latest recording of Rutter’s Requiem (released 1st April 2003), in which Elin sang the famed Pie Jesu, was selected as the Editor’s Choice in the May 2003 issue of Gramophone Magazine. On the opera stage, Elin has played the part of Despina (Cosi Fan Tutte), Arminda (La Finta Giardiniera), Angelica (scenes from Handel’s Orlando), Constance (Poulenc’s Dialogue des Carmelites) and Lucy (scenes from The Telephone). Elin also sings with many professional groups, such as the Monteverdi Choir, the Sixteen, Polyphony and Cambridge Singers, for all of whom she has also appeared as a soloist both in concert and on recordings. In January this year she toured the United States under the baton of Sir John Eliot Gardiner, singing as soloist in the Mozart Vespers, Haydn’s Heiligemesse and Handel’s Dixit Dominus, to great acclaim; she also sang the Monteverdi Vespers in St Mark’s Venice, and Bach’s Mass in B Minor on a recent European tour. Work with chamber ensembles includes the Dunedin Consort, with whom she sang Stockhausen’s Stimmung live on Radio 3 in the Edinburgh Festival, and Cambridge Baroque Chamber Ensemble, who will be performing Couperin’s Leçons de Ténébres in this year’s Three Choirs Festival. Elin recently completed her post-graduate studies with Eiddwen Harrhy at the Royal College of Music, thanks to a financial award from the Arts Council of Wales, and was awarded the Ted Moss and Bertha Taylor-Stach Lieder Prize, as well as third place in the National AESS English Song Competition. Future engagements include Handel’s Dixit Dominus, and Couperin’s Leçons de Ténébres, and a recital in Oxford. This year sees the launch of her debut solo CD, of French chansons and other songs, on the Welsh label Kissan; and later this year she can be heard as soloist on the new Polyphony CDs of the works of James Macmillan and Sir John Tavener, as well as on the Monteverdi Choir of Guerrero and Lobo. |
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Paul Plummer – Piano Paul Plummer was educated at New College, Oxford where he gained the FRCO and a BA degree, before attending the Guildhall School of Music and Drama as a post-graduate student of piano accompaniment in 1995. He has studied with Andrew Ball, Graham Johnson, Malcolm Martineau, David Owen-Norris and Roger Vignoles, and in the summer of 1997 was the Wilhemina Sandwen Fellow in vocal coaching and accompaniment at the Tanglewood Music Centre. From 1998 to 2000 he was Geoffrey Parsons Junior Fellow at the Royal College of Music where he is now busy as an accompanist and coach of singers at all levels. Described in the European press as a "superb accompanist...with remarkably imaginative interpretations", "with great possession" (The Glasgow Herald, The Independent), "able and sensitive" (Bonn General-Anzeiger), his work with singers has taken him across the UK and further afield. He has performed with singers of the calibre of Stephen Roberts, James Bowman and Henry Herford. Along with the CD Carte Postale (with Simon Gay, Cardinal Records), he has recently made a CD of English song with the tenor Mark Wilde. Recent concert engagements have included playing the piano solo in Constant Lambert’s The Rio Grande, performing with the Orchestra of St. John’s Smith Square in Le Bal Masqué (Poulenc) and playing alongside David Owen-Norris in Carmina Burana for the Oxford Bach Choir. Other events have included recitals at the Royal Opera House (Linbury Studio Theatre), the Swaledale Festival, and Canterbury Sounds New festival (in a recital with James Bowman), adjudicating the piano competitions at various public schools and making a CD of Jewish music with "Laudibus". Work for Radio 3 includes an invitation concert appearance with Lontano and the BBC Singers, a recorded Purcell Room concert, and a full studio recital with the soprano Rachel Nicholls. Recitals in 2002-3 include engagements with Thomas Guthrie at the Purcell Room and Burgh House, Hampstead (for the British Association of Pyschotherapists), a Little Missenden Festival recital with Eamonn Dougan, and a programme of English Song for the Three Choirs' Festival 2003 with the tenor Nathan Vale. He has since December 1996 also been the regular pianist for the ensemble Cantabile with whom he has toured Italy, Turkey, Germany and Holland as well as frequently performing in UK venues including the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Royal Albert Hall, Leeds Civic Theatre, and - before an audience of more than 40,000 - in the 1998 Proms in the Park. In December 1999 he played for the group in 15 cabaret performances at the Bar jeder Vernunft in central Berlin. From 1997 to 2002 Paul was Director of Music at St. Stephen's Church, Gloucester Road, where besides running the church's liturgical music he established the church's renowned "Rush-Hour Recital Series". He is also the Musical Director of the West London Vocal Ensemble with whom he has recently given concerts in central venues of Prague and Vienna. |
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1. Crépuscule
Like a veil, And, until the morning rays, The lilies only sleep awhile, At the banquet of life, Farewell, fields which I have loved, They who were to deaf to my farewells.
1. De Sapho
2. De Socrate
3. D’un fleuve
4. De Narcisse
5. De Don Juan
1. Les Anges
2. Elegie
3. Sylvie
4. De los Alamos vengo, madre.
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