Classes

Masterclass

With Sir Thomas Allen, Dame Josephine Barstow, Richard Farnes CBE, Ann Murray DBE, our Patron Nicky Spence OBE and Roderick Williams OBE

Our Masterclass guests offer an insightful, detailed and performance-related study of your chosen aria or song.  As the emphasis is on interpretation and characterisation, all music must be fully memorised. For Richard Farnes’ masterclass, student conductors must fully prepare extracts in advance.

Song Studio

With Harriet Burns & Ian Tindale (English Song & Lieder), Iain Burnside, Christopher Glynn, Audrey Hyland (Duos & Pianists only), Audrey Hyland (The Songs of Mel Bonis), Dylan Perez, Jo Ramadan, Lada Valešová (Czech & Russian Song) and William Vann (English Song)

We invite students to explore the vast genre of art song, with a particular focus on the interpretation of English Song. Please see the bottom of the page for inspiration.

Berlin to Broadway

With James Holmes this class focuses on the golden age of Broadway, up to the works of Kurt Weill and Stephen Sondheim. James Holmes will guide you through the musical styles and performance practices of this genre of music, which will include both solo and ensemble numbers. See repertoire suggestion below.

Opera Box

With David Cowan, Dave Doidge, Alessandro Fisher (Italian Language), Ashok Gupta (Baroque Arias & Duets), Richard Hetherington, Brenda Hurley, Andrew Smith and Lada Valešová

Work with one of our coaches on an aria, duet or ensemble to refine your language, style and interpretation for a performance at our final concert.

The Stage

With James Garnon (Dialogue and Texts) and Professor Janis Kelly (Opera Duets)

Actor James Garnon is a Globe Associate Artist and has taught both actors and directors. At Grasmere Song he will work with the students on the nuance of text. Professor Janis Kelly will work on semi-staging Opera Duets, guiding students through the physical and dramatic elements of character development.

The Teaching Room

With Jane Irwin, Professor Janis Kelly, Wilma MacDougall, Mary Nelson and Professor Stephen Robertson

These lessons will focus on the healthy production of your singing technique, and will last 45 minutes in duration. Lessons cater for all standards and ages of singers, and we also encourage amateurs who enjoy choral music to consider an individal lesson.

Collaborative Pianists

As a student pianist we will pair you with bursary singers to collaborate during the course. There will also be opportunities to work with our experienced pianists and repetiteurs who will cover specific technical and repertoire challenges, advice on working with singers and techniques for conducting from the piano, an increasingly useful skill for getting work as a collaborative pianist.

The Professional Path

With Audrey Hyland and Steve Phillips, joined by a panel of industry professionals

The skills required to be a 21st century performer are varied and diverse. Through mock auditions, feedback and Q&A we will explore practical audition experience and career development. 

Repertoire Suggestions

At Grasmere Song we’re focusing on the beautiful genre of English Art Song. This might include songs in your repertoire by popular English-speaking composers such as:  

• Henry Purcell (1659-1695)
• Edward Elgar (1857-1934)
• Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958)
• Roger Quilter (1877–1953)
• Frank Bridge (1879–1941)
• John Ireland (1879–1962)
• George Butterworth (1885–1916)
• Ivor Gurney (1890–1937)
• Herbert Howells (1892–1983)
• Peter Warlock (1894–1930)
• Michael Head (1900–1976)
• Gerald Finzi (1901–56)
• William Walton (1902-1983)
• Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)

Some other composers to consider:

• Hubert Parry (1848-1918)
• Maude Valérie White (1855-1937)
• Sir Arthur Somervell (1863-1937)
• Frederic Keel (1871-1954)
• Thomas Dunhill (1877-1946)
• Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979)
• William Denis Browne (1888-1915)
• Cecil Armstrong Gibbs (1889-1960)
• Benjamin Burrows (1891-1966)
• Charles Wilfred Orr (1893-1976)
• Muriel Emily Herbert (1897-1984)
• Ina Boyle (1889-1967)
• Edmund Rubbra (1901-1986)
• Lennox Berkeley (1903-1989)
• Michael Tippett (1905-1998)
• Elizabeth Maconchy (1907-1994)
• John Sykes (1909-1962)
• Geoffrey Bush (1920-1998)
• Madeleine Dring (1923-1977)
• Betty Roe (b.1930)
• Dame Judith Weir (b.1954)
• Ian Venables (b.1955)
• Errollyn Wallen (b.1958)
• Jonathan Dove (b.1959)
• James MacMillan (b.1959)
• Cheryl Ann Frances-Hoad (b.1980)

Berlin to Broadway Repertoire Suggestions

On 27 December 1927, Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein’s Show Boat opened on Broadway and began in earnest the transformation of an inconsequential and light-hearted form of operetta imported from Europe into something that could be integrated, serious in intent and quintessentially American. The ‘Golden Age’ of Broadway that followed was graced by the likes of Gershwin, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Harold Arlen, Richard Rodgers, Kurt Weill and later, Leonard Bernstein, Marc Blitzstein and Stephen Sondheim: their backgrounds and pedigree were varied, but they were all interested in telling stories on the musical stage in new and exciting ways. To do that, they often needed great storytellers in words – writers like Moss Hart and Maxwell Anderson, lyricists like Hammerstein, Lorenz Hart, Ira Gershwin. And they all needed performers that not only possessed a gift for storytelling through word and character but who through well-trained, technically secure singing voices, could give the closed forms and rhythmic underpinning of the Broadway ‘number’ as much variety of colour and character as any song from the great writers of Lieder and chanson. Kurt Weill said that we shouldn’t recognise ‘serious’ and ‘light’, ‘classical’ and ‘popular’ in talking about music, only ‘good’ and ‘bad’; that is something this course will always attempt to do.

Naturally, participants can look through the scores of regularly revived classics – Carousel, Kiss Me, Kate, My Fair Lady, Guys and Dolls, Cabaret, Candide, Sweeney Todd, The Threepenny Opera – for songs and characters that suit their voice and personality. But it shouldn’t be forgotten that the history of ‘Golden Age’ Broadway is also generously studded with numbers that have endured as ‘standards’ while the original shows have been forgotten. The bittersweet songs of Rodgers and Hart; of Harold Arlen, inflected with his love of black musical idioms; of Weill, where every number seems to warrant a different stylistic approach – it is the songbooks as much as the scores that can open up possibilities for an individual and fresh interpretation. The course will always try to offer repertoire advice, should it be required; and as Broadway shows are as greatly enriched as opera by the interaction of characters – be it Curley and Laurey in Oklahoma!, Maria and Anita in West Side Story, the two Princes in Into the Woods, Porgy and Bess, Sam and Rose in Street Scene – anyone interested in being part of a duet or ensemble would be more than welcome.