Take Two
Last week I returned to Champs Hill to record my second solo CD for Champs Hill Records. It hardly seems possible that I was last there two and half years ago, as so much has happened since, including...
View ArticleInto the Dark
Last week I visited the Oxfordshire Science Festival to participate in Awake!, an event combining discussion and live music to examine the phenomenon of AAGA (accidental awareness during general...
View ArticleOh show us the way to the next whisky bar!
Next Monday I am performing a concert in the Royal Opera House’s lunchtime concert series with my colleague from the chorus there, Katy Batho, and pianist Stephen Higgins. We chose our programme to...
View Article“Notes from the Asylum” CD recording sessions
Recording a substantial recital disc of wildly-different repertoire was always going to be an exciting challenge. That was the point. Knowing that we had the support of Champs Hill Records, and some...
View ArticleFinding Mabel Ritchie
There are many operas and plays based on real events or people who really lived: Don Carlo and Kròl Roger; Oppenheimer and Masterclass (about Maria Callas) to name a few. Any performer playing someone...
View ArticleYes, ’tis Mabel
I wrote in a previous blogpost about researching the English soprano Margaret (“Mabel”) Ritchie, whom I will be playing in the forthcoming drama about Shostakovich, Like a Chemist from Canada. At the...
View ArticleLudlow English Song Weekend 2015
There are plenty of good reasons to visit Ludlow. John Betjeman thought it was “probably the loveliest town in England” and, as well as its historic buildings, good food and beautiful countryside, it...
View ArticleShostakovich at the Sheldonian
Last Friday was the final performance of Like a Chemist from Canada, the play in which I have been taking a minor role as the English singer Margaret Ritchie. Appropriately enough, the show was in...
View ArticleO my!
There’s creativity in the air at St Paul’s, Knightsbridge. This is the church where I have sung on Sunday mornings for the past twelve years, as one of an eight-part professional choir. The church is...
View ArticleBrainstOrm
Recently we had our first creative “brainstorm” for the O Antiphons project at St Paul’s Knightsbridge. I’m reasonably good at staring reflectively into space (see left) but the business of capturing...
View ArticleTrees, Walls, Cities and Brodskys
I returned from the Royal Opera’s tour of Japan this year with a two-day turnaround before I went out to Dubrovnik to meet the Brodsky Quartet. We hadn’t worked together before and I was joining them...
View ArticleRevisiting Hugh Wood and Laurie Lee
Thanks to the Hampstead Garden Suburb Chamber Music Concerts, I had the chance to revisit Hugh Wood‘s wonderful Laurie Lee Songs in performance. Since recording them last year for NMC, I hadn’t sung...
View ArticleCHROMAtic music
Yesterday I joined members of CHROMA to workshop new compositions by students of the Music Department at Royal Holloway, University of London, where CHROMA is currently resident. Apart from the...
View ArticleO Veni
The Church of England traditionally marks the beginning of Advent with a service on the eve of the season and this year at St Paul’s Knightsbridge we observed the date in a decidedly non-traditional...
View ArticleHappy Christmas
Clare performing at a Christmas concert at Leighton House earlier this month Thank you for following me and my work both here and through my production company, McCaldin Arts. It’s been a busy year...
View ArticleCome on 2016!
2016 is starting with a buzz of activity, dusting off existing projects for performance and preparing the ground for new work. My podcasting project features new conversations with Stephen McNeff,...
View ArticleTales from Backstage
This week I posted my eighth podcast episode – the second part of an extended conversation with composer Stephen McNeff in which we talk about writing for singers, what makes for successful...
View ArticleApril 29 launch of Notes from the Asylum
I’m delighted to announce that 29th April is the confirmed date for the release of my second CD, Notes from the Asylum, by Champs Hill Records. Pianist Libby Burgess and clarinettist Catriona Scott...
View ArticleStevie Smith and Artemisia Gentileschi
This month I am getting inside the minds of two very different female artists, the English poet Stevie Smith and the Italian painter Artemisia Gentileschi. Stevie Smith (1902-1971) was a novelist and...
View ArticleFresh Ayres
I love working with strings and so jumped at the chance to give the first performance on 11 June of Artemisia, a cycle of songs by Paul Ayres about the life of ground-breaking Renaissance painter...
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