NEW CHORAL MUSIC – THE COMPOSER'S PALETTE
Country: UK
As Miles Davis said about Behop “It wasn’t about standing still and becoming safe. If anybody wants to keep creating, they have to be about change”.
Some music has been easily understood and performed when new, but, perhaps more often, it has been hard, either because of its modernity or because it stretches existing techniques, and often both. From at least the end of the 19th Century, music has changed fast, often became more complex and difficult to play and sing.
Nicholas’ presentation will focus on techniques and methods to widen the ability of choirs to sing more complicated new music, while also addressing composers with an emphasis on what does and doesn’t work for voices, ways in which their imagination can fly, but also be practical and manageable for amateur choirs.
Nicholas Cleobury has an international reputation in the concert hall, opera house and recording studio. He has conducted most of the leading symphony and chamber orchestras of Great Britain, Europe and across the world. He has conducted for numerous opera companies and was Principal Conductor of the Royal Academy of Music Opera and Musical Director of Broomhill and Artistic Director of Mid Wales Opera.
Nicholas has worked extensively as a Choir Director, having been Assistant Director of the BBC Singers and Chorus Master at Glyndebourne. He has given over 100 premieres, is a fervent champion of new music. In 1997 he founded Sounds New to bring contemporary music to a wider public.
A regular broadcaster with the BBC, Classic FM and on European radio, his discography includes highly regarded recordings of Mozart Concertos with the Britten Sinfonia and RPO, an award-winning CD of the music of Richard Strauss for EMI, Bridge, Headington, Maw and English Music with the Britten Sinfonia and Oxford Bach Choir, and many others including the Chopin Piano Concertos and a Spanish Fiesta with the RPO.
He is Head of Opera at the Queensland Conservatorium, and his work as a coach includes the Jette Parker Programme at the Royal Opera House and the National Opera Studio in London, Zurich Opera Studio and Stockholm Academy. He is also in demand as a Conducting teacher. He is Founder Laureate of Britten Sinfonia, and until recently was Artistic Director of Mid Wales Opera, Principal Conductor of JAM (New Choral music) and the Oxford Bach Choir.