Bass singer Will Thomas Gold Medal Finalist in AMC

24 year old British bass singer Will Thomas

With the Annual Music Competition (AMC) Gold Medal Finalist now just around the corner, we meet our third finalist, British bass Will Thomas; one of the four soloists who will be competing for the £15,000 first prize at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on 30 May.

 

24 year old Will is the winner of the 2019 Veronica Dunne International Singing Competition, winner of the 2018 Kathleen Ferrier Award and winner of the 2018 John Christie Award from Glyndebourne. A Jerwood Young Artist in the 2018 Glyndebourne Chorus, he sang the role of Nicholas in Barber’s Vanessa. 

Brought up in Harpenden, Will is currently on the Opera Course at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama where he studies with John Evans.

In January 2019, he performed the bass solo at Wigmore Hall in Graham Johnson’s Songmakers’ Almanac and in November 2018, he made his LSO debut performing Bartok’s Cantata under François-Xavier Roth at the Barbican Concert Hall. 

He sang the bass role in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in Lyon in June 2018 and made his debut performance in 2017 as the Shepherd in Pelléas et Mélisande at Garsington Opera. 

Will is a Help Musicians UK Maidment award holder, won the Joaninha Trust Award in March 2018 and also became a Drake Calleja Scholar 2018-19.

He enjoys a busy schedule as a recitalist and in operatic roles. Future engagements include a Songmakers’ Almanac Concert with Graham Johnson in June 2019.

While singers have been well represented at the AMC Gold Medal Final over the years, with baritone Morgan Pearson winning most recently in 2013, a bass has never taken home the prize. Could this be the year?

First published at Royal Over-seas League, May 2019

Review - Petula Clark: Once More with Love

Photo courtesy Australian Arts Review

By Bill Stephens

They’re two words that are thrown around fairly liberally these days, but when you watch Petula Clark perform, you know you’re in the presence of a genuine “legendary star”.  Indeed, it’s hard to believe that Petula Clark’s career spans eight decades. She appears ageless as she commands the stage for a performance that lasts well over two hours.

Her adoring audience needed no encouragement when invited to sing along with her. They knew every word to Downtown, This is My Song, Don’t Sleep in the Subway, Colour My World, with which she topped the charts in the 1960’s. But Clark’s career commenced well before the 60’s, beginning as a child star entertaining troops in concerts and on radio during the Second World War.

Her catalogue of song hits is vast, but Clark had much more to offer than hit songs. She’s a gifted story-teller, and her stories of her friendships and encounters with other legends, like John Lennon, Peggy Lee, Fred Astaire and Charlie Chaplin, are told with grace and humour.

She paid tribute to Lennon with Imagine and to Peggy Lee with Fever, explaining before she sang it, that she refused to record Fever until after Lee had died. She told of spending an afternoon with Chaplin, dancing with him to her recording of This is My Song which Chaplin wrote for the film A Countess from Hong Kong. She shared memories of working with Fred Astaire when they starred in the film, Finian’s Rainbow, and sang two songs from the film.

Though her voice, understandably, has lost some of its bloom, it’s still immediately recognizable as Petula Clarke’s. She’s aware of its deficiencies, even stopping at one point to repeat a phrase, when her voice faltered. Not that anyone was worried. She still had plenty of soaring notes to share, singing in both French and English, with impeccable annunciation and phrasing.

She offered masterful interpretations of Lloyd-Webbers, Don’t Cry For Me Argentina and his demanding With One Look, which she performed wrapped in the cloak she wore when she starred in Sunset Boulevard on the West End.

Clark also included several of her own compositions in her program, including the catchy From Now On. For one or two songs she accompanied herself on the grand piano, but mostly she sang to the sensitive accompaniment of her long- time musical director, Grant Sturiale and four local musicians who made up her impressive backing band.

Following her Australian tour Clark will return to London’s West End for the first time in 20 years, to play ‘The Bird Woman’ in Mary Poppins. No doubt her performances in that will earn her more standing ovations to rival the one given to her by her enthusiastic Canberra audience.

First published at Australian Arts Review, May 14, 2019

Doris Day, Hollywood actress and singer, dies aged 97

Doris Day. Photo courtesy UMDb

Hollywood legend Doris Day, whose films made her one of the biggest stars of all time, has died aged 97.

The singer turned actress starred in films such as Calamity Jane and Pillow Talk and had a hit in 1956 with Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be).

Her screen partnership with Rock Hudson is one of the best-known in the history of romantic movies.

In a statement, the Doris Day Animal Foundation said she died on Monday at her home in Carmel Valley, California.

It said she had been "in excellent physical health for her age, until recently contracting a serious case of pneumonia".

"She was surrounded by a few close friends as she passed," the statement continued.

Born Doris Mary Ann Von Kappelhoff in April 1922, Day originally wanted to be a dancer but had to abandon her dream after breaking her right leg in a car accident.

Instead she began her singing career at the age of 15. Her first hit, Sentimental Journey, would become a signature tune.

Her films, which included Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much and That Touch of Mink, made her known around the world.

But she never won an Oscar and was nominated only once, in 1960, for Pillow Talk, the first of her three romantic comedies with Hudson.

Honours she did receive included the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2004 and a lifetime achievement Grammy in 2008.

Her last release, the compilation album My Heart, went to number one in the UK in 2011.

Day's real life was not as upbeat as her on-screen persona

Day's wholesome, girl-next-door image was a popular part of her myth that sometimes invited ridicule.

"I've been around so long, I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin," the musician Oscar Levant once remarked.

Day herself said her "Miss Chastity Belt" image was "more make-believe than any film part [she] ever played."

Her life was certainly not as sunny. She married four times, was divorced three times and was widowed once.

She also suffered a mental breakdown and had severe financial trouble after one husband squandered her money.

In the 1970s, she turned away from performing to focus her energies on her animal foundation.

According to the organisation, she wished to have no funeral, memorial service or grave marker.

In later life she became an advocate for animal welfare

Dick Van Dyke, another Hollywood legend from the same era although he never worked with Day, said she had an "energy about her".

"She wasn't trying to act. It was just who Doris Day was, I think, a great energy and exhilaration, and she seemed to love life, at least that's the impression you got," he told BBC Radio 4's PM programme. "It was a great era."

Star Trek actor William Shatner remembered Day on Twitter said "the World's Sweetheart," saying she was "beloved by all".

Fellow Star Trek cast member George Takei said she was “synonymous with Hollywood Icon”, while Spanish actor Antonio Banderas wrote: “Thank you for your talent.”

Novelist Paulo Coelho marked her passing by quoting lyrics from Secret Love, one of her numbers in Calamity Jane.

"We've lost another great Hollywood talent," tweeted Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane, while actor Luke Evans said he had "always loved" her voice and "beautiful" songs.

Former Beatles member Paul McCartney paid tribute to Day on his website, describing her as "very funny lady who I shared many laughs with", adding: "I will miss her but will always remember her twinkling smile and infectious laugh".

And his daughter, fashion designer Stella McCartney, shared a photo of her and Day alongside words which read: "The one, the only, the woman who inspired so much of what I do."

First published at BBC News, May 14, 2019