Gavin Carr
Encyclopedia
Gavin Carr is a British baritone
working in opera
, concert
and recital, and a conductor
, particularly known for his choral work.
.
and Theatre Consultant Martin Carr. He studied at the Michael Hall
Steiner School and Hurstpierpoint College
before going to up to King's College, Cambridge
to read music and art history, where he was a Choral Scholar in the celebrated Chapel Choir
. He was a founder member with Stephen Layton
of the now-famous chamber choir Polyphony
. He emigrated to Australia for five years, where he began his singing and conducting careers working with the Victoria State Opera and the leading-contemporary music group, the Elision Ensemble.
He then studied in the US, with Dickson Titus in San Francisco, and at the Steans Institute in Chicago. Returning to London he studied with Janice Chapman, and at the Britten-Pears School at Snape, studying with Elly Ameling, Hugues Cuenod, Suzanne Danco, and Galina Vishnevskaya.
As a conductor he assisted at the Wexford Festival, and with Jan Latham-Koenig on various opera and concert productions throughout Europe, and also observed Sir Charles Mackerras on productions with English National Opera.
he premiered a host of new works and has premiered numerous songs, cantatas and song-cycles, including Michael Finnissy
's Not Afraid and Medea; and Alison Bauld's Where should Othello Go?, dedicated to him by the composer. In opera he has sung for in the UK (ENO Barber of Seville, Dido and Aeneas, Four Saints in Three Acts), France (Paris Opéra école lyrique Falstaff, Opéra Nomade Lucia di Lammermoor), Ireland (Opera Ireland Guilio Cesare), Australia (Sydney Transfigured Nights Festival Finnissy Shameful Vice) and Italy (Montepulciano Tippett Knot Garden).
He continues to appear as a singer most recently in Golijov's Ainadamar
(CBSO under Robert Spano in Birmingham and London), and in Britten’s War Requiem
(Opera Municipal, Santiago, Chile and with the Novaya Opera, Moscow).
), and taking positions as Assistant Conductor at the Cantiere Internationale d’Arte di Montepulciano under Jan Latham-Koenig (Tippett
's Knot Garden, Henze's Das Wundertheater and Weill
's Mahagonny Songspiel) and at the Wexford Festival under David Agler (Donizetti's Maria di Rohan
, Fauré
's Pénélope
, Susa
's Transformations
, Dvořák
's Rusalka
and Donizetti's Don Gregorio
). He made his operatic conducting debut at Wexford with the Peter Brook
version of Bizet’s Carmen
, which was nominated for ‘Best Opera Production of 2007’ in the Irish Times National Arts Awards.
In 2006 he was appointed Associate Principal Conductor of the Bath Philharmonia, with whom he premiered Paul Carr
's Requiem for and Angel and conducted large-scale choral-symphonic repertoire including the Brahms' Deutsches Requiem, Beethoven's Mass in C major
, Mozart's Requiem
and C Minor Mass, and Haydn's Creation with his choruses based in the South West of England.
In April 2007 Gavin Carr made his debut with the English Chamber Orchestra
, conducting Emma Kirkby
, Sarah Connolly
and James Gilchrist
in the St Matthew Passion in Bath Abbey
. For this concert he formed a new professional chamber choir, Chorus Angelorum.
In 2007 he became Chorus Master of the South West Festival Chorus and musical director of the Bath Minerva Choir. In January 2009 he was appointed Music Director of Bristol Bach Choir and in September 2009 he become Chorus Director of the Bournemouth Symphony Chorus.
In 2011 he was appointed Chorus Master of Wexford Festival Opera
, and relinquished his post with Bristol Bach Choir.
Baritone
Baritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or...
working in opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
, concert
Concert
A concert is a live performance before an audience. The performance may be by a single musician, sometimes then called a recital, or by a musical ensemble, such as an orchestra, a choir, or a musical band...
and recital, and a conductor
Conducting
Conducting is the art of directing a musical performance by way of visible gestures. The primary duties of the conductor are to unify performers, set the tempo, execute clear preparations and beats, and to listen critically and shape the sound of the ensemble...
, particularly known for his choral work.
Biography
Carr is Music Director of the Bournemouth Symphony Chorus, Wexford Festival Opera Chorus, Chorus Angelorum, Bath Minerva Choir, and Chorus Master of the South West Festival Chorus, and Southern Festival Chorus. His schedule includes workshops and masterclasses across the UK, and affiliations with colleges such as Chetham's School of Music and Bath Spa University. He is the brother of composer Paul CarrPaul Carr (composer)
Paul Carr is an English classical music composer. Born in Cornwall, he has been writing music since the age of 15. He studied voice at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and worked in opera stage management before concentrating on composing...
.
Education
Carr was born in London, the son of Adelaide soprano and Covent Garden Prima Donna Una HaleUna Hale
Una Hale 18 November 1922 – 4 March, 2005) was an Australian operatic soprano, mainly known in her native country and in the United Kingdom. Born in Adelaide, Hale came to Britain in 1946 to study at the Royal College of Music...
and Theatre Consultant Martin Carr. He studied at the Michael Hall
Michael Hall
Mike Hall , is a former Welsh rugby union international, now property developer and part time rugby pundit....
Steiner School and Hurstpierpoint College
Hurstpierpoint College
Hurstpierpoint College is an independent, co-educational, day and boarding school for pupils aged 4–18, located just to the north of the village of Hurstpierpoint, West Sussex in the lee of the South Downs...
before going to up to King's College, Cambridge
King's College, Cambridge
King's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. The college's full name is "The King's College of our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge", but it is usually referred to simply as "King's" within the University....
to read music and art history, where he was a Choral Scholar in the celebrated Chapel Choir
Choir of King's College, Cambridge
The Choir of King's College, Cambridge is one of today's most accomplished and renowned representatives of the great British choral tradition. It was created by King Henry VI, who founded King's College, Cambridge in 1441, to provide daily singing in his Chapel, which remains the main task of the...
. He was a founder member with Stephen Layton
Stephen Layton
Stephen Layton is an English conductor.Layton was raised in Derby, where his father was a church organist. Layton learned the piano as a youth. He was a chorister at Winchester Cathedral, and subsequently won scholarships to Eton College and then King's College, Cambridge as an organ...
of the now-famous chamber choir Polyphony
Polyphony
In music, polyphony is a texture consisting of two or more independent melodic voices, as opposed to music with just one voice or music with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords ....
. He emigrated to Australia for five years, where he began his singing and conducting careers working with the Victoria State Opera and the leading-contemporary music group, the Elision Ensemble.
He then studied in the US, with Dickson Titus in San Francisco, and at the Steans Institute in Chicago. Returning to London he studied with Janice Chapman, and at the Britten-Pears School at Snape, studying with Elly Ameling, Hugues Cuenod, Suzanne Danco, and Galina Vishnevskaya.
As a conductor he assisted at the Wexford Festival, and with Jan Latham-Koenig on various opera and concert productions throughout Europe, and also observed Sir Charles Mackerras on productions with English National Opera.
Singing career
He has appeared in concert and recital at festivals such as Aldeburgh, Brighton, Dartington, Halle, Ravinia and Sydney and with major orchestras and choruses worldwide, recording for Australian Radio, the BBC and German radio. In Australia with Pipeline Ensemble and the Astra Chamber Music SocietyAstra Chamber Music Society
The Astra Chamber Music Society is a concert organisation for choral music and contemporary performance, based in Melbourne, Australia and under the musical direction of John McCaughey....
he premiered a host of new works and has premiered numerous songs, cantatas and song-cycles, including Michael Finnissy
Michael Finnissy
Michael Finnissy is an English composer and pianist. His music is characterised by the range of extremes often found in his work; opposing binary structures are found commonly, often seen as juxtaposing textures, register and tempi...
's Not Afraid and Medea; and Alison Bauld's Where should Othello Go?, dedicated to him by the composer. In opera he has sung for in the UK (ENO Barber of Seville, Dido and Aeneas, Four Saints in Three Acts), France (Paris Opéra école lyrique Falstaff, Opéra Nomade Lucia di Lammermoor), Ireland (Opera Ireland Guilio Cesare), Australia (Sydney Transfigured Nights Festival Finnissy Shameful Vice) and Italy (Montepulciano Tippett Knot Garden).
He continues to appear as a singer most recently in Golijov's Ainadamar
Ainadamar
Ainadamar means "Fountain of Tears" in Arabic, and is the first opera by Argentinian composer Osvaldo Golijov. The libretto is by American playwright David Henry Hwang. It premiered in Tanglewood on August 10, 2003. After major revisions, the new version premiered at the Santa Fe Opera on July 30,...
(CBSO under Robert Spano in Birmingham and London), and in Britten’s War Requiem
War Requiem
The War Requiem, Op. 66 is a large-scale, non-liturgical setting of the Requiem Mass composed by Benjamin Britten mostly in 1961 and completed January 1962. Interspersed with the traditional Latin texts, in telling juxtaposition, are settings of Wilfred Owen poems...
(Opera Municipal, Santiago, Chile and with the Novaya Opera, Moscow).
Conducting career
In 2003 Gavin Carr returned to conducting, taking on the Directorship of The Athenaeum Singers in Warminster, studying under Sir Charles Mackerras (Makropoulos Case/ENOEnglish National Opera
English National Opera is an opera company based in London, resident at the London Coliseum in St. Martin's Lane. It is one of the two principal opera companies in London, along with the Royal Opera, Covent Garden...
), and taking positions as Assistant Conductor at the Cantiere Internationale d’Arte di Montepulciano under Jan Latham-Koenig (Tippett
Tippett
Tippett is the surname of:*Andre Tippett , American footballer*Clark Tippet , American dancer*Dave Tippett , ice hockey coach*Gerald Tippett, fictional character in Shortland Street...
's Knot Garden, Henze's Das Wundertheater and Weill
Kurt Weill
Kurt Julian Weill was a German-Jewish composer, active from the 1920s, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht...
's Mahagonny Songspiel) and at the Wexford Festival under David Agler (Donizetti's Maria di Rohan
Maria di Rohan
Maria di Rohan is a melodramma tragico, or tragic opera, in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti. The Italian libretto was written by Salvadore Cammarano, after Lockroy and Edmond Badon's Un duel sous le cardinal de Richelieu, which had played in Paris in 1832.- Roles :- Synopsis :The comte de...
, Fauré
Faure
Faure or Fauré is a French family name and may refer to:People:* Edgar Faure, French politician* Élie Faure, French art historian and essayist* Émile Alphonse Faure, lead battery pioneer* Cédric Fauré, French football striker...
's Pénélope
Pénélope
Pénélope is an opera in three acts by the French composer Gabriel Fauré. The libretto, by René Fauchois, is based on Homer's Odyssey. It was first performed at the Salle Garnier, Monte Carlo on 4 March 1913.-Background and performance history:...
, Susa
Conrad Susa
Conrad Stephen Susa is an American composer, particularly known for his operas. His 1973 chamber opera, Transformations, set to texts from the poems of Anne Sexton, is one of the most frequently performed operas by an American composer and was one of the featured operas of the 2006 Wexford Opera...
's Transformations
Transformations (opera)
Transformations is a chamber opera in two acts by the American composer Conrad Susa with a libretto of ten poems by Anne Sexton from her 1971 book Transformations, a collection of confessional poetry based on stories by the Brothers Grimm...
, Dvořák
Antonín Dvorák
Antonín Leopold Dvořák was a Czech composer of late Romantic music, who employed the idioms of the folk music of Moravia and his native Bohemia. Dvořák’s own style is sometimes called "romantic-classicist synthesis". His works include symphonic, choral and chamber music, concerti, operas and many...
's Rusalka
Rusalka
In Slavic mythology, a rusalka was a female ghost, water nymph, succubus, or mermaid-like demon that dwelled in a waterway....
and Donizetti's Don Gregorio
Don Gregorio (opera)
Don Gregorio is an opera by Gaetano Donizetti, adapted from his popular 1824 opera buffa L'ajo nell'imbarazzo, from a libretto by Jacopo Ferretti. While L'ajo nell'imbarazzo enjoyed success at Teatro Valle, it was not suited to the Teatro Nuovo in Naples, where Francesco Tortoli was interested in...
). He made his operatic conducting debut at Wexford with the Peter Brook
Peter Brook
Peter Stephen Paul Brook CH, CBE is an English theatre and film director and innovator, who has been based in France since the early 1970s.-Life:...
version of Bizet’s Carmen
Carmen
Carmen is a French opéra comique by Georges Bizet. The libretto is by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée, first published in 1845, itself possibly influenced by the narrative poem The Gypsies by Alexander Pushkin...
, which was nominated for ‘Best Opera Production of 2007’ in the Irish Times National Arts Awards.
In 2006 he was appointed Associate Principal Conductor of the Bath Philharmonia, with whom he premiered Paul Carr
Paul Carr (composer)
Paul Carr is an English classical music composer. Born in Cornwall, he has been writing music since the age of 15. He studied voice at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and worked in opera stage management before concentrating on composing...
's Requiem for and Angel and conducted large-scale choral-symphonic repertoire including the Brahms' Deutsches Requiem, Beethoven's Mass in C major
Mass in C major (Beethoven)
Ludwig van Beethoven wrote his Mass in C major, Op. 86, to a commission from Prince Nikolaus Esterházy II in 1807. In fulfilling this commission, Beethoven was extending a tradition established by Joseph Haydn, who following his return from England in 1795 had composed one mass per year for the...
, Mozart's Requiem
Requiem
A Requiem or Requiem Mass, also known as Mass for the dead or Mass of the dead , is a Mass celebrated for the repose of the soul or souls of one or more deceased persons, using a particular form of the Roman Missal...
and C Minor Mass, and Haydn's Creation with his choruses based in the South West of England.
In April 2007 Gavin Carr made his debut with the English Chamber Orchestra
English Chamber Orchestra
The English Chamber Orchestra is a British chamber orchestra based in London. The full orchestra regularly plays concerts at Cadogan Hall, and the ECO Ensemble performs at Wigmore Hall...
, conducting Emma Kirkby
Emma Kirkby
Dame Carolyn Emma Kirkby, DBE is an English soprano singer and one of the world's most renowned early music specialists. She attended Sherborne School For Girls in Dorset and was a classics student at Somerville College, Oxford, and an English teacher before developing a career as a soloist...
, Sarah Connolly
Sarah Connolly
Sarah Patricia Connolly CBE is an English mezzo-soprano.Sarah Connolly was educated at Queen Margaret's School, York and then studied piano and singing at the Royal College of Music, of which she is now a Fellow...
and James Gilchrist
James Gilchrist (tenor)
James Gilchrist is a British tenor specialising in recital and oratoria singing. He began his working life as a doctor, turning to a full-time music career in 1996...
in the St Matthew Passion in Bath Abbey
Bath Abbey
The Abbey Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Bath, commonly known as Bath Abbey, is an Anglican parish church and a former Benedictine monastery in Bath, Somerset, England...
. For this concert he formed a new professional chamber choir, Chorus Angelorum.
In 2007 he became Chorus Master of the South West Festival Chorus and musical director of the Bath Minerva Choir. In January 2009 he was appointed Music Director of Bristol Bach Choir and in September 2009 he become Chorus Director of the Bournemouth Symphony Chorus.
In 2011 he was appointed Chorus Master of Wexford Festival Opera
Wexford Festival Opera
The Wexford Festival Opera is an opera festival that takes place in the town of Wexford in South-Eastern Ireland during the months of October and November.-Festival origins under Tom Walsh, 1951 to 1966:...
, and relinquished his post with Bristol Bach Choir.
Singing releases
- HandelHANDELHANDEL was the code-name for the UK's National Attack Warning System in the Cold War. It consisted of a small console consisting of two microphones, lights and gauges. The reason behind this was to provide a back-up if anything failed....
: Messiah (with Alison Smart - soprano, William Towers - counter-tenor, Michael Hart-Davies - tenor, St Michael's Singer and the English Symphony Orchestra, William Boughton - conductor), NimbusNimbus RecordsNimbus Records is a British record company specializing in classical music recordings.Nimbus was founded in 1972 by the late bass singer Numa Labinsky and the brothers Michael and Gerald Reynolds and has traditionally been based at the Wyastone Leys mansion site, near Monmouth and the English/Welsh...
(2003)
Conducting releases
- Paul CarrPaul Carr (composer)Paul Carr is an English classical music composer. Born in Cornwall, he has been writing music since the age of 15. He studied voice at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and worked in opera stage management before concentrating on composing...
: Requiem For An Angel (with Sophie BevanSophie BevanSophie Bevan is a British soprano appearing in concerts, recitals, and opera.- Biography :Sophie Bevan studied as a Karaviotis Scholar with Lillian Watson at the Benjamin Britten International Opera School where she was awarded the Queen Mother Rose Bowl for excelling in music.Her concert...
- soprano, Mark StoneMark Stone (opera singer)- Biography :Born in London 12 June 1969, he studied at Wilson's School, Wallington before going up to King's College, Cambridge to read Mathematics. After graduating in 1990 he worked as a Chartered Accountant and an investment banker before studying singing at the Guildhall School of Music and...
- baritone, Chorus Angelorum and the Bath PhilharmoniaBath PhilharmoniaThe Bath Philharmonia is an orchestra based in Bath.Jason Thornton is the orchestra's Artistic Director, Peter Donohoe the Principal Guest Conductor and Gavin Carr the Associate Conductor.-Background:...
), Stone RecordsStone RecordsStone Records is a British, independent, classical record label, founded in 2008 by opera singer Mark Stone. It started by producing recordings of English song but has since widened its repertoire to include instrumental, choral and orchestral works....
(2010)