Tag Archives: shannon

Così preview

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Today’s lunchtime concert in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre featured members of the COC Studio Ensemble performing extracts from Act 1 of Così fan tutte as a teaser for their performance of Atom Egoyan’s production on February 7th.  This promises to beeven more confusing than usual as the young lover roles are all being shared to accommodate everyone.  Today, Clraence Frazer and Danielle MacMillan being sick we had but one Guglielmo, Cameron McPhail, and one Dorabella, Charlotte Burrage.  Andrew Haji and Owen McAusland alternated as Ferrando and Sasha Djihanian and Aviva Fortunata doubled Fiordiligi (those two, at least, are easy to tell apart).  Gordon Bintner sang Don Alphonso and Claire de Sévigné played Despina.

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English Song

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Yesterday’s free concert in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre featured three members of the Ensemble Studio singing 20th century English language songs.  The concert opened and closed with Vaughan Williams.  Baritone Clarence Frazer gave us five songs from Songs of Travel (texts by Robert Louis Stevenson) and Cameron McPhail sang three songs from The House of Life (texts by Dante Gabriel Rossetti).  These are some of my favourites and I must have almost worn out my CD of Thomas Allen singing them (On the Idle Hill of Summer on Virgin Classics).  So, I don’t know whether that made me more or less critical but I thoroughly enjoyed both performances.  Clarence sang strongly, straightforwardly and with very fine diction while Cam was more overtly emotional.  Both approaches worked.

Clarence Frazer

Clarence Frazer

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Poetic Echoes: A Britten Celebration

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Yesterday’s free concert in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre saw four members of the Ensemble Studio singing contrasting works by Benjamin Britten.  First up was bass-baritone Gordon Bintner with excerpts from Tit for Tat; settings of works by Walter de la Mare.  These were full blooded performances and Bintner gave full reign to his powerful and flexible voice.  It’s a terrific instrument but I would have preferred a little more restraint and subtlety, especially in something as intimate as these pieces.  Next up was tenor Andrew Haji with excerpts from Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo.  It was rather a similar story.  He has a fine, operatic voice and gave the songs a rather operatic treatment.  It was good singing but not in the idiom one is accustomed to hearing this music sung in.

Photo: Karen Reeves

Photo: Karen Reeves

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Here we go again

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Yesterday saw the first of this season’s free concerts in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre.  As has become the norm it featured the singers of the COC’s Ensemble Studio.  This year it was dedicated to the memory of the late Lotfi Mansouri and included a couple of short tributes to him.

Six of the Ensemble’s singers are new this year, as is the sole pianist, so these were mostly singers I haven’t heard a lot of.  I’ve also observed how much members of the Ensemble Studio develop in the programme and last year we had a solid group of third years with a few new entrants.  The balance has shifted to the other extreme and so no surprise that yesterday we heard more potential than polish.

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Front (l – r): Clarence Frazer, Sasha Djihanian, Danielle MacMillan, Michael Shannon
Middle (l – r): Gordon Bintner, Aviva Fortunata, Claire de Sévigné, Cameron McPhail
Back (l – r): Andrew Haji, Charlotte Burrage, Owen McCausland
Photographer: Karen Reeves

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