Our 30th anniversary celebrations across the year have shone a spotlight on the people whose lives have been changed by Samling Institute’s work. The birthday year ends with a special showcase at Wigmore Hall on 6 November, with Samling Artists and former Academy Singers sharing this stage for the first time, in a programme that celebrates the power of music to change lives.
Samling Artists mezzo-soprano Cláudia Ribas and tenor Euan McDonald will make their Wigmore Hall debuts at this showcase, alongside soprano Nardus Williams, baritone Felix Gygli and pianists Jonathan Ware and Alfred Fardell. Their programme illustrates how composers and poets have harnessed the power of music to tell its own story, and includes Schubert’s Shepherd on the Rock, Dvořák’s Gypsy Songs and ends with one of the greatest love songs to art, Vaughan Williams’s Serenade to Music.
Samling Artists and Academy Singers also came together in Gateshead this summer for the first of our celebratory concerts, ‘The Party’. We are now preparing to welcome our new cohort of thirty Academy Singers who will begin their year with six busy days of workshops and classes developing every aspect of their performance. You can come and see them in action in our afternoon concert at The Glasshouse on 25 October when they’ll be sharing some of the solo and ensemble repertoire they’ve been working on with our leaders. We’re also making exciting plans for the next Samling Academy Opera which will be at The Fire Station in Sunderland again, with performances on 9 and 10 July. We’ll tell you more soon!
Our outreach work in state secondary schools across the North East is continuing to have a significant impact on our intake for Samling Academy. We are very proud that almost two thirds of this year’s intake are from state schools, joining singers from our university partners. This year’s new singers include four from our recent Singing Schools programmes and another five from the schools we visited with our Samling Futures workshops earlier this year. This vital work continues in October when Durham Johnston Comprehensive School join our Singing Schools network. Their choir, solo singers and staff will receive an intensive course of development led by Samling Artist Miranda Wright, focussing on Samling’s core principles of healthy technique, attention to text and learning through doing.
30 Voices of Samling
Find out from the people who matter how Samling has changed their lives. As part of our 30th anniversary fundraising campaign, we’ve been hearing from Samling Artists and Academy Singers across the generations, including a video from Garsington Opera’s cast of Il ritorno d’Ulisse that features nine Samling Artists.
You can see the growing collection of messages here.
