Educated at Newcastle University and the Britten-Pears School for Advanced Musical Studies, Christopher was a winner of the N.F.M.S. Young Concert Artists' Award and a finalist in the Richard Tauber Competition at The Wigmore Hall. He was also selected to take part in the inaugural singing course at The Samlings.
His concert work has seen him perform throughout the UK and Europe with orchestras such as the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Concert Orchestra, Britten Sinfonia, Les Musiciens du Louvre and Concerto Köln and conductors such as Pierre Boulez, Sir Andrew Davis, Mark Minkowski and Phillippe Herreweghe. This includes concerts in Madrid of The Messiah at the Auditorio Nacional de Música, the B minor Mass at the Teatro Monumental (for Spanish Television), the Latvian premiere of Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius, Mozart’s Requiem at the Royal Festival Hall, a Bach cantata concert at The Wigmore Hall and the first English performance of The Messiah in China, given in the Concert Hall of the Forbidden City, Beijing.
Christopher has appeared in many festivals and in radio broadcasts in France, Belgium, Holland and at home. For BBC Radio 3 these have included Bach’s St. Matthew Passion for the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts on two separate occasions (with Joshua Rifkin and Trevor Pinnock), Bruch’s Schön Ellen, Schumann’s Manfred and Stravinsky’s Le Rossignol (both at the Royal Festival Hall) and the world premieres of Donizetti's cantata Christopher Columbus, and Britten’s The Rescue of Penelope in the Aldeburgh Festival.
In recent years, his recital work has been increasingly in demand, with concerts in Newcastle, Gregynog, Salisbury Festival, the City of London and two performances in The Banqueting House, Whitehall, with music from war-inspired poetry ranging from English song, lieder and chanson to Glenn Miller. Performances of Schubert’s Schwanengesang are planned for this autumn.
His operatic roles include Sam in Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti (Gent, Belgium), Britten’s The Traveller in Curlew River (covered for Opera de Rouen), Mozart’s Figaro and Count Almaviva (covered for Sir John Eliot Gardiner), Don Alfonso in Così fan tutte (Britten-Pears School), Marcello in La bohème, Arthur in Maxwell Davies’ The Lighthouse and for Pavilion Opera, Germont Père in La traviata. His recordings include Purcell’s Timon of Athens conducted by Trevor Pinnock, Bach’s Cantata No. 34 conducted by Sir John Eliot Gardiner both for Deutsche Grammophon and Hotel Waiter in Britten’s Death in Venice, conducted by Richard Hickox CBE.
Photograph: Ben Ealovega |
