SOPRANO
Joanna Bywater
Joanna read Music at the University of Bristol before gaining a distinction in the post-graduate diploma in Singing at the Royal College of Music.
As a choral singer, Joanna works with choirs including the BBC Singers, the Gabrieli Consort, Le Concert D’Astrée, Britten Sinfonia Voices and Philharmonia Voices. She has sung under conductors including Bernard Haitink, Riccardo Muti and Esa-Pekka Salonen. Recent performances include Walton Belshazzar’s Feast with the BBC Singers and Sakari Oramo at the first night of the BBC Proms 2015 and Beethoven Ninth Symphony with Philharmonia Voices and Christoph von Dohnányi for the Philharmonia’s 70th anniversary concert.
Recent solo work has included Beethoven Ah! Perfido with the LSE Orchestra, Nielson Third Symphony with Sinfonia Tamesa, and various performances of Strauss’ Four Last Songs.
Joanna also works as a conductor, and she is Musical Director of London-based Constanza Chorus, and Assistant Director of the internationally-award-winning Farnham Youth Choirs. She has worked with choirs including London Symphony Chorus, Royal College of Music Chorus, Reading University Choirs, East London Chorus, Whitehall Choir, Reading Bach Choir, Wimbledon Choral Society, Thomas’ Choral Society, Polish National Youth Choir and London City Chorus. She has taught singing at junior departments at both the Royal College of Music and at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music, where she also directed the choirs.
Nicola Corbishley
A music graduate of the University of Liverpool, Nicola Corbishley’s love of singing was nurtured from an early age through her membership of the National Youth Choir of Great Britain. Now an established solo and ensemble soprano, Nicola performs regularly with groups such as the Gabrieli Consort, the Choir of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, English Concert, The King’s Consort, Ludus Baroque, The Eric Whitacre Singers and Philharmonia Voices.
Nicola has appeared as a soloist in a UK tour of Theatre Cryptic’s acclaimed world premiere staging of David Lang’s The Little Match Girl Passion, a unique piece for vocal quartet. In concert, she has performed Handel’s solo cantata Tu fedel? Tu costante? alongside a collection of English and German Baroque arias at London’s Lincoln’s Inn Chapel for the Chancery Bar Association Recital Series and at the Edinburgh Festival, and works regularly across the UK as a respected oratorio soloist.
A regular member of The Pinewood Singers, Apollo Voices and RSVP Voices, Nicola has appeared on the soundtracks of many blockbuster films, such as Prometheus, Hercules, The Prince of Persia, Shrek Forever After, Cinderella, Arthur Christmas and the forthcoming release of Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice. TV work includes recordings for Britain’s Got Talent (ITV) backing Labrinth on The Jonathan Ross Show (ITV), and the soundtrack for a forthcoming David Attenborough documentary (BBC).
MEZZO
Cathy Bell
Cathy Bell started singing in choirs when she was eight, and progressed through the National Youth Choir to a choral scholarship at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, alongside undergraduate and masters studies in English and Medieval Literature. She now sings professionally with groups including the BBC Singers, the Clerks’ Group, Tenebrae, the Sixteen, Philharmonia Voices, the Hanover Band, the Edvard Grieg Kor (Norway), Britten Sinfonia Voices, the Choir of the Enlightenment and the Academy of Ancient Music.
As well as choral singing, Cathy works in opera: recent roles include Carmen for Barefoot Opera, Arsamenes (Handel Xerxes) for Hampstead Garden Opera, Russian Nanny (Britten Death in Venice) for Garsington Opera, Third Lady/Third Boy (Mozart Die Zauberflöte) for Diva Opera and the Palestine Mozart Festival, Arasse (Hasse Siroe) for the London Handel Festival; and roles in contemporary operas for the Tête à Tête Festival, Grimeborn Festival and WNO MAX. Opera chorus work includes Scottish Opera, Garsington, Grange Park, Bergen Nasjonale Opera and the festivals in Aix-en-Provence and Beijing.
Cathy now specialises in baroque and contemporary repertoire and is lucky to have spent the past year as a member of the Handel House Talent Scheme. Recent recitals with harpsichord have taken her to the Handel House (“Handel in London”, “Raging Roland”, “Handel by Candle – a lecture recital” as well as several recitals tailored to particular tour groups), the Wallace Collection (“Dance in the Court of Louis XIV”) and Summer in the Square, and she is planning to take these programmes to early music festivals next year. Cathy also greatly enjoys her work as an oratorio soloist. Highlights in the past year include Bach Mass in B minor with Leicester Bach Choir; Bach Magnificat with South West London Choral Society; Bach Christmas Oratorio and Handel Judas Maccabeus with the North Herts Guild of Singers; CPE Bach Magnificat with Nottingham Harmonic Choir and Swindon Choral Society; Handel Messiah with Cantemus; and Rachmaninov Vespers (it’s not all baroque!) with Oxford Bach Choir.
Cathy teaches singing privately and has a strong interest in education work. She is hugely looking forward to working alongside young singers on the threshold of the music profession as part of the Voces Chamber Choir.
Ruth Kiang
Ruth studied at the Universities of Durham and Cambridge before moving to London ten years ago. She now has a busy freelance career, performing and recording regularly as a consort singer with a wide variety of professional vocal ensembles, including Gabrieli Consort, Polyphony, Choir of the Enlightenment, Choir of the Academy of Ancient Music, BBC Singers, Eric Whitacre Singers, Philharmonia Voices, Britten Sinfonia Voices and 5-part consort, the Clerks.
CD recordings include Britten’s War Requiem, Mendelssohn’s Elijah (with step-out solos), Britten’s A Boy was Born and an unaccompanied programme, A Song of Farewell for Gabrieli Consort; multiple recordings for Polyphony (Bruckner, Poulenc, Gabriel Jackson, Lukaszewski, Handel, a disc of American music, Bach’s St John Passion, Arvo Pärt and Karl Jenkins); Bach’s St John Passion with Academy of Ancient Music; multiple recordings with Eric Whitacre Singers. Ruth has also performed on many film soundtracks as part of Metro Voices, Synergy Vocals, Apollo Voices, London Voices and Pinewood Singers.
Recent concerts include Brahms’ Triumphlied with the Choir of the Enlightenment and Marin Alsop at 2015 BBC Proms; Handel’s Messiah at the Rheingau Musik Festival and Handel’s Saul in Bucharest with Choir of the Enlightenment and Laurence Cummings; a premiere by Christopher Fox with the Clerks, live in concert on BBC Radio 3; Beethoven’s Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt with BBC Singers and Ilan Volkov in London.
Future engagements in 2015/16 include performances of a medieval programme with the Clerks; a European tour of Handel’s Messiah, concerts and a recording of Haydn’s The Seasons in Poland with Gabrieli Consort; Handel’s Messiah with Britten Sinfonia Voices; performances of Karl Jenkins and Bach’s St John Passion with Polyphony in Frankfurt, Paris and London.
TENOR
Alastair Carey
Alastair has been involved in choral performance since the age of six. He has performed, recorded and broadcast throughout the United Kingdom and Europe, appearing as a vocal performer with choral ensembles including The Gabrieli Consort, I Fagiolini, The Oxford Camerata and The Brabant Ensemble in diverse performances ranging from the BBC Proms to the Leipzig Bach Festival. As a conductor, he has directed more than 200 concerts throughout the UK, Europe, Asia and Oceania, including award winning performances at the European Grand Pix and the World Choir Games; he currently directs professional, student and amateur choirs in Salisbury, Cambridge and London. As a teacher and mentor, he has worked extensively with young singers as a tutor on the Eton Choral Course programmes and as a vocal coach specialising in young and developing voices at The Oratory School.
Alastair has a particular interest in sacred vocal performance and has performed extensively with the choirs of Westminster Abbey, Westminster Cathedral, St Paul’s Cathedral, and Christ Church, Oxford, where he was a lay clerk. He studied choral conducting with Stephen Layton at Cambridge and ensemble performance with Anthony Rooley at the Schola Cantorum in Basel, Switzerland.
Tom Raskin
Born in Bath, Tom studied at the RNCM in Manchester and New College, Oxford. In 2000 he was awarded the Anne Ziegler Prize, followed by the Freckleton Prize in 2001, and was the recipient of a major Scholarship from the Peter Moores Foundation which funded study in Italy and in London.
Equally at home on the operatic stage and concert platform, Tom has worked with many leading conductors and ensembles. A permanent member of Amaryllis Consort, he also sings with The Sixteen, The BBC Singers, Monteverdi Choir, Binchois Consort, Gabrieli Consort, The Clerks and the Choir of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.
Most recently he was heard live on BBC Radio 3 as the soloist in Rossini’s Stabat Mater from Kings College, Cambridge. International concert appearances have included St Mark’s Basilica, Venice for Monteverdi Vespers, Lille for B Minor Mass, and Siberia for Messiah in the Novisibirsk Festival, and Jonathan in Handel’s Saul for the Dutch Handel Choir in Naarden. In 2015 he has performed CALAF in Act 1 of Turandot in West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge, CAVALIERE La Locandiera for New Chamber Opera and in December 2015 he will return to Norwich Cathedral for Messiah.
BASS
Jon Stainsby
Jon Stainsby was a choral and academic scholar at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and completed a doctorate in English literature at the University of Oxford before turning to singing full time. He recently completed the postgraduate opera course at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, performing the roles of Mr Gedge (Britten, Albert Herring), Father Augustine (Prokofiev, Betrothal in a Monastery), Demetrius (Britten, A Midsummer Night’s Dream) and Herr Fluth (Nicolai,Die Lustigen Weiber von Windsor). He also performed regularly with the RCS Song Studio; highlights of his work as a recitalist include a performance of songs by Schubert and Kilpinen with Malcolm Martineau at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Shakespeare settings at the Royal Overseas League in Edinburgh, and a recital at Steinway Hall for the Delius Society following their award to him of the 2012 Delius Prize. He has participated in Graham Johnson’s Young Songmakers Programme, and has been a Britten Pears Young Artist three times, studying Schubert Lieder with Christian Gerhaher, Purcell with Christian Curnyn, and Bach with Mark Padmore.
He sings with a number of Europe’s foremost vocal ensembles, including the Choir of the Academy of Ancient Music, Dunedin Consort, EXAUDI, Collegium Vocale Gent and the Balthasar-Neumann-Chor, and has worked as a chorister at Bergen Nasjonale Opera, Wexford Festival Opera and the Festival Lyrique d’Aix-en-Provence. Recent and forthcoming highlights include the baritone role in of Claude Vivier’sKopernikus in Amsterdam for De Nationale Opera, and an appearance with Ensemble Ictus and Les Cris de Paris at the Opéra de Lille, for the première of Wolfgang Mitterer’s Marta. He continues his studies privately with Gary Coward.
David Stuart
David read music at New College, Oxford University where he sang as a choral scholar, and then Lay Clerk of the choir. He graduated with a First Class honours degree and went on to gain a Masters in Performance at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. Some years later, on a scholarship, he took a MSt. in Musicology at Oxford (awarded a Distinction), and was granted a further scholarship to pursue Doctoral research. Since 2001 he has tutored undergraduates from several Oxford colleges and visiting students from U.S. universities in music history. He is currently involved in an Oxford-Princeton University collaboration researching English operas staged in London and New York 1780-1850, for which he has given seminars at both universities and is preparing a chapter for a forthcoming publication accompanying an exhibition at the Bodleian Library. With Peter Hanke and Paul Hedley, he has worked for many years with Exart for the Saïd Business School, Oxford as a singer and co-coach, delivering leadership courses through the arts to business leaders from around the world.
As a professional baritone he has sung principal roles in operas spanning from Purcell to Britten throughout the U.K. and has sung in the choruses of Covent Garden, Opéra Comique and Garsington Opera. He regularly performs internationally with several of the world’s leading choirs and consorts including the Monteverdi Choir, AAM, OAE, Brabant Ensemble, Philharmonia Voices, and Musica Beata. He has also sung with the Sixteen, King’s Consort, Gabrieli Consort, Ex Cathedra, A Capella Portuguesa and Stile Antico. He has made over 40 recordings, two of which were finalists for a Gramophone Award. He frequently appears as an oratorio soloist and recitalist, and has recorded film and TV soundtracks including Aardman’s Arthur Christmas and Howard Goodall’s How Music Works. Most recently, with Sir John Elliot Gardiner’s Monteverdi Choir, he has performed in Orfée ed Euridice at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.