Next Concert

Next Concert:

Summer Concert 2008

Saturday, 10th May at 7.45 p.m.

Venue:-

(Click on photograph to enlarge)

St Mary's Church, Burnham-on-Crouch, Essex, UK
For the location of St. Mary's church click here.

Programme :-

Giacomo Rossini's: Petite Messe Solennelle

Conductor :-

Terry Saunders
(See below for biography)

Guest Soloists:-

Soprano:- Suzanne Walker
Mezzo-soprano:- Marjorie Ouvry
Bass-Baritone:- Martin Lamb
Tenor:- Alex Pidgen
(See below for biographies)

Choir:-

The Burnham Music Group

Piano:-

Tom Potten

_______

For ticket information click here.

For the location of St. Mary's church click here.

For details of the Burnham Music Group click here.

BIOGRAPHIES:-

OUR CONDUCTOR AND MUSICAL DIRECTOR :-
Terry Saunders: Terry Saunders studied at Bristol University and with John Carol Case (voice) and Pamela Speed-Andrews (piano). He has pursued a varied musical career over the last 30 years, as an opera & oratorio singer, music theatre & cabaret performer, organist & choirmaster, composer and conductor. As well as many roles in Mozart operas, he has sung Escamillo (Carmen), Dulcamara (L'Elisir d'Amore), Kecal (The Bartered Bride), Uberto (La Serva Padrona) and the title role in Don Pasquale. Terry has appeared as an oratorio soloist in more than 100 concerts - including 16 performances of Stainer's Crucifixion - and he has had the privilege of working with Sir David Willcocks on several occasions. In music theatre, Terry's favourite role is Professor Higgins in My Fair Lady. He has performed this role in three productions, one of which - at Richmond Theatre - won him an Arts Council award. He has conducted several musicals, including South Pacific at Epsom Playhouse and Sweet Charity at The Secombe Theatre, Sutton. Terry regularly acts as an accompanist to other singers, and is a senior house pianist at the Ardingly International Music School . Terry was Director of Music at St John’s , Stoneleigh, from 2000 to 2006, for whom he composed liturgical settings and several hymns. Terry also appeared for nine years as one of the 'boys with the obedient feet' in the cabaret group Vamp 'til Ready; now he performs his own one-man shows, including "An Evening with Noel Coward" and "I Get A Kick Out Of Cole". King Arthur was his first concert as musical director of the Burnham Music Group.

Tom Potten: was born in 1981 and has lived in Essex most of his life. At the age of 7 he started piano lessons under local teacher Ray Clarke, and with the guidance of his influential school music teacher, Peter Dale, he developed his enthusiasm for music. In 2002 he gained his Bachelor of Music degree from the London College of Music and Media, having studied with composer Kit Turnbull and Jazz musician Eddie Harvey. It was here that his passion for contemporary music really began. Since then he has been working primarily as a piano teacher and session musician around the county, gaining Yamaha certified music teacher status in 2003. He also recorded accompaniments for Spartan Press Publications in the same year and next year he will work with different publishers on a new series of books. This will be Tom’s first time as conductor of the Burnham Music Group and he hopes to continue working with them as a rehearsal pianist for many more years to come.

Suzanne Walker – Soprano: Suzanne studied at the University of Birmingham where she graduated with a BA (Hons) degree in Music, Drama and Dance. She studied singing at the Birmingham Conservatoire and with Annette Thompson in London. Her oratorio experience includes Handel’s Messiah and The Passion of Christ, Fauré’s Requiem, Haydn’s The Creation and Passion of Christ, Mozart’s Requiem and Exultate Jubilate, Vivaldi’s Gloria, Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, Leighton’s Crucifixus Pro Nobis, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Brahms’ Requiem and Schubert’s Stabat Mater for the St Peter’s Singers, Peterborough Cathedral, Bury St Edmunds Cathedral, Ramsey, Kings Lynn and Ely Choral Societies, Blackheath Choir, and St George’s choir in St Anne’s Cathedral Belfast amongst others. Operatic roles include Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro and Silberklang in Der Schauspieldirektor by Mozart, Lauretta in Bizet’s Dr Miracle, Atalanta in Xerxes and Ino in Semele by Handel, and Dido in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, for companies such as Opera Experience, Opera Da Camera, Morley Opera, Definitely Divas and Starlight Opera. She has created the roles for a number of new contemporary operas including Heather in Lunch at the Cooked Goose and Elizabeth I in Welcome to Purgatory by Betty Roe & Marian Lines, as well as Spem and the song cycle The Year of the Green Parrots by Joe St Johanser. She recently made a recording with the London Sinfonietta of a new opera The Tempest by Joe St Johanser playing the part of Trincula. She also gives recital concerts and performs regularly with Three in a bar. When not singing Suzanne works in contemporary dance and is Director of Programming at Sadler’s Wells.

Marjorie Ouvry - Mezzo-soprano: After graduating as a teacher, Marjorie began to study singing with the eminent baritone, John Carol Case, and continued with him until he retired. Subsequently she has studied with Marjorie Thomas, Susan McCulloch and Ameral Gunson along with master classes with Rudolf Piernay, Robin Bowman, and Richard Jackson. Her singing career, which ran alongside her career in education, started in her native Scotland, continuing as she sang in amateur opera companies and workshop productions and as a professional soloist with many British choral societies, notably the BBC Club Choir conducted by Ronald Corp, London Choral Society and the London Mozart Players conducted by Jane Glover. Marjorie was a prize-winner and highest placed woman entrant in the International Singing Competition, ‘The English Song Award’, in 1984. In 1996, Marjorie was invited as soloist to the first Festival of Classical Music in the Seychelles. She has performed as soloist in venues such as Peterborough, Coventry and Birmingham Cathedrals, Blackheath Halls, St Martin in the Fields, National Portrait Gallery and recently Southwark Cathedral. She was co-founder, with Suzanne, of the all-woman quartet ‘Definitely Divas’ who performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2000 to critical acclaim. Marjorie, with Suzanne and Terry, is one third of the trio ‘Three in a Bar’, which commissioned and premiered a musical theatre piece by Betty Roe called Welcome to Purgatory in the 2003 Fringe. The demands of her work as a freelance education consultant gradually dominated her time especially after she published her second book in 2004. It was the renowned mezzo-soprano Ameral Gunson and eminent accompanist Eugene Asti who encouraged her to fulfil her dream and concentrate on singing full time as a postgraduate diploma student at Trinity College of Music where she gained a place in 2005. At college she has been given many opportunities to perform notably in the Schumann Festival and last year took part in the College’s performance of Beggars’ Opera (Mrs Trapes). Last year she and Michalis Angelakis won the Lillian Ash French Song Competition for voice and piano and they were in the finals of the Trinity College Lieder Competition. This year Marjorie has won the John Ireland Song Competition. Future commitments include First Prioress in Les Diologues des Carmelites by Poulenc in June, sharing a recital of English Song for the Friends of Blackheath Halls in July and the Angel in Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius in October. She is currently studying with the distinguished teacher Hazel Wood.

Martin Lamb - Bass-baritone:Martin Lamb was born in Southport and read English at St John's College, Oxford, before taking up a postgraduate place at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where he won the Sir Frederick George Painter Prize. He has worked for English Touring Opera, the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, Garsington Opera, Pavilion Opera, Grange Park Opera, London City Opera, Opera Holland Park, European Chamber Opera, The G&S Opera Company, Minotaur Music Theatre and many other regional companies, in roles ranging from Don Pasquale (including giving the national premier of the opera in the Philippines), Nicolai's Falstaff, the Sacristan, Angelotti and Sciarrone (Tosca), Raimondo (Lucia di Lammermoor), Baron Douphol (La Traviata), Kecal (The Bartered Bride), Masetto and Il Commendatore (Don Giovanni), Colline (La Bohème), to Dick Deadeye (HMS Pinafore), Sergeant Meryll (The Yeomen of the Guard) and many other operetta roles. An experienced oratorio soloist, Martin's repertoire embraces a wide range of works, and he is a keen cabaret performer, specialising in Edwardian music. He also undertakes work as an actor, having appeared in two Christmas plays at the Brewery Arts Centre, Kendal, and recently took part in a reading of new fiction in central London. Last year, Martin toured the country as the Mayor in ETO’s highly acclaimed production of Jenufa, and appeared as Baron Zeta in Opera UK’s London production of The Merry Widow. Future plans include the Lackey in Garsington Opera’s production of Ariadne auf Naxos, Bartolo and Antonio in Le Nozze di Figaro for Heritage Opera and an illustrated lecture on W. S. Gilbert as part of the International Gilbert & Sullivan Festival in Buxton. Martin continues his singing studies with Robert Dean.