Mozart Mass in C Minor
- 7.30pm
You are viewing:
Event information
Tickets
About this event:
- Category:
- Classical Music
- Event type:
- Booking required | In-person
- Admission:
- Booking required Tickets from £16.96
- Location:
- St Giles Cripplegate, Fore Street, London, EC2Y 8DA
Event information
Eclectic Voices, the Covent Garden Chamber Orchestra, conductor Scott Stroman, and soloists Adaya Malka Peled, Alexandra Pouta, Michael Lafferty and Redmond Sanders will present Mozart's Mass in C Minor as completed by Robert Levin.
The concert, held in conjunction with Levin's annual visit to the Guildhall School, features soloists from the School.
Renowned pianist, musicologist, and composer Levin will explain the process of investigation, deduction, re-repurposing and imagination he used to complete the Mass, composed in 1782-83 but left incomplete. The satisfying result is akin to a sympathetic completion of a historic building, where the new addition is distinct but complementary.
An additional aperitif will be provided by pianist David Dolan, Professor of Classical Improvisation at Guildhall School, who will be joined by the soloists to illustrate techniques of decoration and improvisation employed in Mozart's time.
Conductor Scott Stroman is known for his musical breadth, equally proficient in orchestral and choral music, opera, and jazz. He insists that the musical sensibilities gleaned in jazz are applicable to all other music, and strongly influence the way he approaches classical music:
“Successfully working in jazz means inhabiting - feeling and speaking - the music's rhythmic and harmonic language. Bringing jazz sensibility into classical music is easy for me - I imagine it to be similar to the way that Mozart or Bach may have worked. This excites me, to bring what I learn in working with Mozart into jazz and vice versa. On top of this, the choral aspect is really important; you have to hear and feel the music in order to perform it."
Image above: David Dolan
Programme & Performers
Mozart Mass in C Minor (completion by Robert Levin)
Eclectic Voices
Covent Garden Chamber Orchestra
Scott Stroman conductor
Scott has been a Professor in the Jazz Department at Guildhall School of Music & Drama since 1983 and was made a Fellow of Guildhall School in 1988. US-born but long based in London, he is a composer, conductor, singer, trombonist and educator, and Director of the London Jazz Orchestra, Eclectic Voices, and Artistic Director of Highbury Opera Theatre (HOT). As a trombonist, singer and conductor he has performed with numerous jazz and world music artists including Youssou N’Dour, Goran Bregovich, Ramamani, Phil Collins, Billy Cobham, Dizzy Gillespie, Kenny Wheeler, Dave Liebman, Norma Winstone, Bobby Wellins and Rufus Reid. He conducts baroque to contemporary music with orchestras, choirs, and opera in the UK and Europe and directed the London Philharmonic Orchestra's innovative cross-genre Renga and Hit Squad ensembles.
He directed the first European performances of all of the Gil Evans - Miles Davis collaborations, created and directed new versions of Coltrane's Africa/Brass, Ellington's Second Sacred Concert and Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers Moanin’, and this season will direct the Guildhall Jazz Orchestra in the first live performance, since Miles Davis recorded it with the Danish Radio Orchestra in 1989, of Palle Mikkelborg's Aura.
A prolific composer, he has written numerous works for jazz ensemble, choir, orchestra, and the stage and recently premiered his second opera, The Weekend, based the book by Michael Palin. He received a BASCA gold badge award for services to music from the Ivors Academy in 2018.
Guildhall School soloists:
Alexandra Achillea Pouta soprano
Alexandra Achillea Pouta is a mezzo-soprano, winner of the 2023 Guildhall Gold Medal Award, two-time finalist of the Maria Callas Foundation Competition, and a 2022 Snape Artist in Residence at Britten Pears Arts. She has performed as a soloist at the Philharmonie de Paris, Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, Barbican Hall, Snape Maltings, Milton Court, Auditorium Manzoni, Durham Cathedral, and Union Chapel among other venues. She is lead singer of medieval and new music ensemble Idrîsî and was a member of the 2023 Glyndebourne Opera Chorus.
She studied Musicology at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Historical Performance at the Early Music Centre of Athens Conservatoire, and Opera Studies at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. She is currently a Guildhall Junior Fellow.
Redmond Sanders baritone
Baritone Redmond Sanders studies at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama as a postgraduate student under the tutelage of Susan Waters. He is generously supported by theRobert Easton scholarship. Redmond graduated from the Royal College of Music as a Rhoddy-Voremburg scholar in 2023. He was the undergraduate winner in the Royal College of Music’s Brooks Van Der Pump English Song Competition 2023.
Roles during his time at the Royal College of Music include 2nd Armed Man in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte in November 2021, John Styx in Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld in November 2022 and Il Boscaiuolo from Respighi’s La Bella Dormente nel Bosco in March 2023 with covers of L’Horoge Comtoise and Le Chat in Ravel’s L’enfant et Les Sortileges.
Redmond has also performed oratorio works, most recently singing the bass solo from Handel’s Messiah in November 2023. Another notable performance was singing the baritone solo from Vaughan Williams’ A Sea Symphony at the Royal College of Music and shortly after in St Asaph’s Cathedral, Wales.
Adaya Malka Peled soprano
Adaya is currently pursuing her D.Mus studies at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. In 2022, she graduated with her Master of Performance at the Guildhall School cum laude. She graduated with a BMus in classical singing from the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance.
Adaya performed as a soloist with many orchestras and ensembles, including the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra, the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, Haifa Symphony Orchestra, the Israeli Chamber Orchestra, Jerusalem Baroque Orchestra and Guildhall Baroque Orchestra.
She sang in many music festivals, such as the Bloomsbury Festival in London, the Felicja Blumenthal International Music Festival in Tel-Aviv, the Israel Festival in Jerusalem, the Bach Festival in Jerusalem, Abu-Gosh Music Festival, and the Upper Galilee Voice of Music Festival amongst others.
Parallel to her studies in London, Adaya performed on various occasions and collaborations, such as Performed Poetics with composer and trombone player John Kenny (King's College), Love at First Sound (Musiikkitalo Hall, Finland), Antika Arkana (France), Idrîsî ensemble (London), Song Guild directed by pianist Graham Johnson (Milton Court Hall) and more. For her performance with Graham Johnson, Adaya won the Paul Hamburger Prize.
Adaya has been awarded the Guildhall School's Financial Award since 2019 and the AICF financial award since 2014.
Michael Lafferty tenor
British tenor, Michael Lafferty, is a dynamic artist, praised for the “melting warmth” of his voice, and “demonstrable affection and involvement” of his performances. (Opera Today). Michael studied on the Opera School at Guildhall School of Music and Drama under the tutelage of David Pollard, where he was generously supported by The Behrens Foundation, The Drake Calleja Trust and Countess of Munster Musical Trust.
Competition successes include First prize at the AESS English Song Competition, winner of the ‘Prix Andre-Bacand Prize’ at the CMIM Competition 2022 (Montreal), and finalist for the GSMD Gold Medal 2023. Concert highlights include Schumann’s ‘Requiem für Mignon’ under the baton of Sir John Eliot Gardiner for Salzurger Festpiele 2021, Handel’s Messiah for Academy of St.Martin in the Fields, and a recital for the Oxford Lieder 2023 festival.
Michael made his Glyndebourne Festival Opera 2023 debut in the role of Officer in Barrie Kosky’s production of Dialogue des Carmélites. He has also performed the roles of Joseph de Rocher (Dead Man Walking) for GSMD Opera and Black (Black el Payaso) for Grimeborn festival 2022, a role for which he was nominated as a finalist for the OffWestEnd Awards. This year, Michael is a Samling Artist and Jerwood Young Artist at Glyndebourne Festival Opera.
