Live From London – Christmas festival 2020

Live From London returns with a Christmas festival running from December 1st – January 6th

The festival is split into two parts:
Live From London – Christmas: The first 11 concerts from 1st – 25th December and including the Gabrieli’s first Bach concert on Christmas Day

Bach for Christmas: All 6 concerts by the Gabrieli Consort & Players – Bach’s Christmas Oratorio BWV248 – starting on 25th December and ending on Epiphany, 6th January

A particular highlight on 15th December is the Choir of Westminster Abbey singing from Westminster Abbey itself. Viewers from around the world will this year have the rare opportunity to share in the magic of the annual Abbey Christmas concert.

The repertoire across the festival ranges from Bach, Praetorius, Eccard, Charpentier and Tallis to Howells, Britten, Pärt, Tavener, Michael McGlynn, Ola Gjeilo, and arrangements of best-loved Christmas pop, all filmed in ultra-high definition and featuring your favourite seasonal a cappella

Award-winning groups featuring include VOCES8, The Choir of Westminster Abbey, the Gabrieli Consort & Players, The Tallis Scholars, Take 6, I Fagiolini, London Adventist Chorale, ANÚNA, amarcord, The Aeolians, and Apollo5

With its first concert since lock-down, the Gabrieli Consort & Players perform Bach for Christmas, joined by a stunning lineup of soloists (including Carolyn Sampson, Anna Dennis, Tim Mead, Roderick Williams and Ashley Riches). Experience Bach’s Christmas Oratorio cantatas, each on the day for which they are liturgically written.

The festival supports the VOCES8 Foundation’s global message of ‘music education for all’ by gifting youth ensembles from across the world a stage for their singing in our Young Performer Spotlight (YPS). The lineup includes: Gabrieli Roar, VOCES8 Scholars, Canterbury Cathedral Girls’ Choir, VERSA, National Youth Chamber Choir of Great Britain, Voices of Singapore Children’s Choir and German Gents.

The festival includes six new VOCES8 commissions from Ken Burton, Melissa Dunphy, Jocelyn Hagen, Taylor Scott Davis, Paul Smith and Roderick Williams that will be published by Edition Peters in the VOCES8 Singles range, as well the premiere of a new violin part in Men and Angels written by Alec Roth especially for Rachel Podger.

More information and tickets sales can be found here.

Anna Dennis sings Handel, and John Blow premiere in Moscow

Anna Dennis performed in two productions in Moscow recently. In November she sang in Handel’s The Triumph of Time and Disillusion with La Voce Strumentale, conducted by Dmitry Sinkovsky at the new Zaryadye Concert Hall. The other singers were Julia Lezhneva, Andrew Goodwin, and Dmitry Sinkovsky.

She returned to Moscow to sing the role of Venus in John Blow’s Venus and Adonis at the Pushkin Museum as part of the December Nights series of the UK-Russia Year of Music 2019. Remarkably, this was the Russian premiere performance of this baroque work, conducted by Robert Hollingworth and also featuring Jonathan Sells as Adonis.

See the performance via Facebook video here.

Anna Dennis records Purcell King Arthur with Gabrieli Consort & Players

Anna Dennis is part of a wonderful set of singers and players who have recorded Purcell’s King Arthur as part of Paul McCreesh’s Gabrieli Consort and players.

Henry Purcell and John Dryden’s King Arthur, the great patriotic opera of the late 17th century, is recorded here in a lively new performing edition, after more than two decades in Gabrieli’s touring repertoire.

Alongside Anna are Mhairi Lawson, Rowan Pierce, and Carolyn Sampson (sopranos); Jeremy Budd and James Way (tenors) and Ashley Riches and Roderick Williams (bass/baritone)

Buy from Amazon here, or stream on Spotify here.

An earlier concert performance from Melbourne, Australia, is available on YouTube here.

Anna Dennis “On the Town” in Japan

Anna Dennis is in Japan playing the role of Lucy Schmeeler in Bernstein’s “On the Town”. A brilliant stage actor, this is a straight acting part for Anna in a new production by the Hyogo Performing Arts Center, Osaka, with stage director/set & costume designer Antony McDonald and conducted by Yutaka Sado, the Artistic director of Hyogo Performing Arts Center.

Performances run in Osaka from 12-21 July 2019 before moving to Tokyo for 4 further performances from 25-28 July 2019.

The production has a website at www.gcenter-hyogo.jp/on-the-town/

A flyer for Osaka is here and for Tokyo here.

Anna Dennis sings Queen of Sheba in Handel’s Solomon

Concerts with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra

Anna performs Handel’s wonderful oratorio Solomon with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra this week, conducted by Peter Dijkstra. It is the second project with the Orchestra this season; Anna sang Mozart’s Mass in C Minor in February to critical acclaim, on that occasion conducted by John Butt.

The concerts are at Edinburgh’s Usher Hall on Thursday 26th and at Glasgow City Halls on Friday 27th.

Full details from the SCO website here.

Anna Dennis sings Bach in Canada

Soprano Anna Dennis performs Bach Cantatas with the Violons du Roy in Canada this week. Directed by Jonathan Cohen and with colleagues Maude Brunet (mezzo-soprano), Andrew Tortise (tenor), Neal Davies (baritone) the programme includes Cantatas BWV107 (Was willst du dich betrüben), BWV1 (Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern) and BWV210 (O holder Tag, erwünschte Zeit). The performances are in Quebec City on March 22nd and in Montreal on March 25th.

Read more about Anna here.