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Interview: Jamie W Hall, Bass Baritone

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baritone Jamie W Hall

Who or what inspired you to take up singing, and pursue a career in music?

I was something of a surprise to a thoroughly non-musical family so my first singing heroes came from the world of TV and musical theatre; Michael Crawford, Michael Ball and particularly Harry Secombe. It wasn’t until I found myself at university – a second-rate pianist being nudged towards the vocal department – that I began to take my own voice seriously. I was taken in hand by an excellent teacher and found inspiration from the absolutely wonderful recordings of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.

Who or what have been the most important influences on your musical life and career?

At 32 my career is barely begun but the biggest influence across all the branches of my career is my membership of the BBC Singers. I’ve been a part of the ensemble for 8 years and I most certainly would not be the musician I am today without that experience. When I joined the group I was in no way prepared for what would be expected of me day in day out. The great beauty of the group though, is that it is the vessel in which is contained a near-century of experience and expertise and I found myself surrounded by older colleagues who have taught me by their own example just about everything I know today. As a singer, as a conductor and as a composer I have been shaped by the BBC Singers.

What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?

As a non-singer turned cutting-edge contemporary choral musician I suppose getting over the horror of sight-singing was a big hurdle. These days I think I’m probably as able a sight-singer as most.

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Interview: Elin Manahan Thomas, Soprano

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Elin Manahan Thomas

Who or what inspired you to take up singing and pursue a career in music?

I’ve been singing since I was little. I started lessons when I was six (pretty normal in Wales) and always sang in choirs. When I was fifteen I joined the Swansea Bach Choir and the conductor, John Hugh Thomas, really became my mentor. That was one turning point in my singing life. Then after I had sung at Clare College Choir for three years at uni, I went to be an au pair for a while. It had never occurred to me that I would be a singer. By total chance during that year I was asked to sing for Sir John Eliot Gardiner and his year of Bach cantatas, with the Monteverdi Choir. That’s what started my life as a professional singer and I still thank the stars for the lucky break that got me that audition.

Who or what were the most important influences on your musical life and career?

Certainly John Hugh Thomas, he was my biggest inspiration when I was young, since he too had started out with Sir John Eliot Gardiner, and his immense musical knowledge and empathy taught me so much. Then it’s been other singers along the way: Emma Kirkby, Rosemary Joshua, Lisa Milne, and especially my peers who’ve surged ahead with fantastic careers, like Carolyn Sampson and Lucy Crowe.

What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?

Getting the balance right. Between singing/presenting; work/family; music I know and love/new music that’s exciting but a lot to learn. It’s a constant juggling act but then, I suppose most careers are.

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The Minnesanger Of Seville

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The Minnesanger of Seville

Seville bills itself as the “City of 150 operas,” and celebrated this fact at the Exposition of 1992 by erecting a magnificent new opera house, the Teatro de la Maestranza, right beside the Plaza de Toros. The seasons of the two theaters do not overlap. Next month, there will be a rare staging of an opera buffa by local boy Manuel Garcia, renowned for being the first to bring opera to New York, with his teenage daughter La Malibran. 

The 1800-seat house has state-of-the-art acoustics, a wide (and open) pit and presumably decent stage machinery, though nothing about Achim Thorwald´s current production of Tannhäuser, co-presented with the Teatr Wielki of Poznan, would have been difficult to produce in the opera houses of two hundred years ago: Pretty stage pictures, paper snow falling, erotic ballet in flesh-colored tights, zaftig singers with big voices. What’s the problem?

Tannhäuser, the second of Wagner’s three “romantic operas,” tickled Eduard Hanslick and established the composer’s bona fides as the coming German kid. He got a job as kapellmeister to the King of Saxony, whose ancestors, Landgraf Hermann of Thuringia and Saint Elisabeth of Hungary, the opera salutes. Wagner blew all this success (except notoriety) by participating in the Revolution of 1848 in Dresden and was then a hunted man for fifteen years, which included the disastrous Paris debut of the revised Tannhäuser.

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