The Choir of Royal Holloway, London Mozart Players, Jack Liebeck, Grace Davidson, Mark Wilde, Julian Empett & Rupert Gough
Biography The Choir of Royal Holloway, London Mozart Players, Jack Liebeck, Grace Davidson, Mark Wilde, Julian Empett & Rupert Gough
Mark Wilde
Born in Scotland, Mark Wilde studied at the University of East Anglia and the Royal College of Music.
His extensive operatic repertoire includes Candide, Albert Herring, Johnny Inkslinger (Paul Bunyan), Male Chorus (Rape of Lucretia), Flute & Snout (Midsummer Night’s Dream), Ferrando (Così), Don Ottavio (Don Giovanni), Idamante & Idomeneo, Tito (Clemenza di Tito), Don Basilio (Marriage of Figaro), Pedrillo (Entführung aus dem Serail), Almaviva (Barber of Seville), Giannetto (Gazza ladra), Cat (Adventures of Pinocchio), Triquet (Eugene Onegin), Berenice (Hipermestra), and Frederic (Pirates of Penzance). He has performed with all UK houses and many throughout Europe.
Mark’s concert engagements have included performances with Aalborg Symphony Orchestra, Academy of Ancient Music, Britten Sinfonia, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, City of London Sinfonia, Lahti Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, and Ural Philharmonic. His repertoire ranges from Bach and Handel through Haydn and Mozart to Britten and Elgar.
Recordings include Fame’s Great Trumpet (EM Records), Elgar Songs, and Britten’s Scottish Songs with David Owen Norris; Ancient Melodies with Helen Sanderson; Handel’s Ode for St Cecilia’s Day, The Fairy Queen, Sullivan’s The Golden Legend & The Prodigal Son, Haydn’s Nelson Mass & Paukenmesse, and Stainer’s The Crucifixion. He appears on numerous recordings of Bel Canto repertoire with Opera Rara.
Mark has enjoyed a long, fruitful partnership with David Owen Norris which allows him to pursue his passion for rediscovering neglected art-song repertoire and exploring novel ways to engage audiences old and new. He formed a duo with Helen Sanderson over 20 years ago and they have enjoyed bringing voice and guitar repertoire to audiences ever since.
Grace Davidson
is a British soprano who specialises first and foremost in the performance and recording of Baroque music.
Grace grew up in a house whose hallway was entirely filled by a grand piano which was being stored for a friend of the family – music was physically unavoidable. She learned the piano and the violin but it was singing that she loved best. Taken to ‘Cats’ when she was three years old she sang along throughout or, rather, whenever her mother’s hand wasn’t clamped over her mouth. And it was her singing that won her a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music where she won the Early Music prize and gained her degree and postgraduate. In 2016 Grace was appointed an Associate of The Royal Academy Of Music.
Since then she has worked as a soloist with leading Baroque ensembles, under the batons of Sir John Eliot Gardner, Paul McCreesh, Philippe Herreweghe and Harry Christophers.
Her discography includes a decade of recordings with The Sixteen, many of which feature her as soloist – Handel’s Jeptha (as Angel), Dixit Dominus, Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610, Pianto della Madonna, Acis and Galatea (as Galatea) and the Lutheran Masses of Bach. On Radio Three’s ‘Building a Library’, her singing in Fauré’s Requiem (with the London Symphony Orchestra and Tenebrae, Nigel Short conducting) was reviewed by Richard Morrison quite simply: “Grace Davidson’s Pie Jesu is matchless”.
Grace’s purity of tone has attracted many of the leading contemporary composers to write for her, most notably Max Richter, who chose her as the solo singer for many of his works, such as Sleep. This piece – lasting all night – has now been performed all over the world, including a performance in 2019 on the Great Wall of China.
Recent solo recordings for Signum Records are Vivaldi & Handel, a disc of sacred solo cantatas with the Academy of Ancient Music and John Dowland: First Booke of Songes Or Ayres with lutenist David Miller.
Rupert Gough
has been Director of Choral Music and College Organist at Royal Holloway, University of London since 2005. He is also Organist and Director of Music at London’s oldest surviving church, Saint Bartholomew the Great, which maintains a professional choir. At Royal Holloway Rupert has developed the choral programme to include weekly choral recitals, choral conducting courses for undergraduates, frequent new choral commissions and transformed the Chapel Choir into an elite group of 24 choral scholars. The Choir has particularly come to prominence through their series of recordings for Hyperion Records. Their recent recording of the music of Ola Gjeilo for Decca Classics was top of the US and UK classical charts. The choir is now in demand for recording work from a variety of record labels, composers and orchestras and travels widely for concert performances.
Rupert was a chorister at the Chapels Royal, St. James's Palace, and won a scholarship to the Purcell School. He received (with distinction) a Masters degree in English Church Music from the University of East Anglia whilst Organ Scholar at Norwich Cathedral. For 11 years he was Assistant Organist at Wells Cathedral during which time he made around 30 CD recordings as accompanist and director. Rupert has worked with a variety of professional ensembles including the BBC Singers, King’s Singers, Britten Sinfonia, London Mozart Players and Tallinn Chamber Orchestra. He regularly conducts and commissions new music for concerts and recordings. This year he is recording the choral music of George Arthur and a new Oratorio by Carson Cooman with the London Mozart Players.
