Goodness, I seem to have turned my back for one second on my website and now about two years have gone by. The previous item was about A Festive Quartet, and so it's sort of fitting that I start my upcoming concert announcements with an event with the same personnel and in the same place! The details of this and other things I've got coming up are as follows:

'Opéra Rêverie [the new name for our little band of 5] presents Jewels and Gems'

A selection of well loved classics from Verdi, Puccini, Bizet, Mozart and more. 

THIS Saturday, 16 Oct, 7pm at the Old Church in Hadlow,  Kent. Tickets £10 (on the door)

I'll be performing numerous ensembles, and the Toreador song, The Impossible Dream... and The Hippopotamus Song.

'Simply Schubert', with Royal Tunbridge Wells Choral Society 

Sunday 14 November, 3pm at Assembly Hall Theatre, Tunbridge Wells. Tickets from £13-18 including postage, available in advance here but also on the door.

I'll be singing solos for the Mass in G, Magnificat, and Tantum Ergo with orchestra, as well as performing two Lieder with piano - Ständchen from Schwanengesang, and Nachtviolen.

Concert with Bishop's Stortford Choral Society and Sinfonia

Saturday 4 December, 7.30pm. Tickets £14 in advance, £16 on the door, free for students, all unreserved. When released, tickets will be available here.

I will appear as the bass soloist for Haydn's Nelson Mass and Bach's Magnificat.

Danilo in 'The Merry Widow' by Lehár, with St Albans Chamber Opera at the Abbey Theatre, St Albans

23-26 March, 7.30pm (4.30 matinée on 26th). Ticket info to follow.

The Wednesday performance is the Gala Night - you can get a glass of wine and canapés in the interval.

So, having talked about my forseeable future it makes perfect sense to start talking about the past:

I've actually been rather lucky in the past few years. I've always been a very self motivated person, and I was lucky to live in a place with relative solitude for the majority of the stricter lockdowns, so I kept singing and practising and preparing. I bought a piano, Bruno, who helped me hone my playing and accompanying skills to the extent that I began to learn and record weekly performances to publish on social media, and accompanied myself while doing so. This even extended to some virtual performances for some other companies such as St Albans Chamber Opera for their Virtual Tea Concert Series; my contributions can be found here, here, here, and here. After a quiet period, I then appeared in a contamporary opera: @emele, which was a light hearted take on Semele, written by David Willcock and Roger Simmonds, the company being Oxfordshire Contemporary Opera. It was a really fun return to opera-ing in real life, and was very well received by our audience. It was a bass baritone role but I enjoyed playing a hot-headed Territorial Army soldier with an Olympus-sized chip on his shoulder.

In the very recent past, I've just finished performing some wonderful music with Amy Jeffs at Cheltenham Literature Festival: Dr Jeffs has recently published a collection of retellings of myths and legends about the founding of Britain, and also wrote some songs that explore the stories. We recorded some of these songs together, and I arranged them for an ensemble featuring vocal harmonies and strings for the festival. We'll be continuing to explore and develop these stories and songs together in future, so look out for that - and please join vast swathes of new readers in purchasing and enjoying the book!

Anyway, I shall try to keep more up to date with this site, and I hope to see you at a performance sometime soon.

All the best, Rx