“Gatekeepers” Panel

Saturday 4th August 2012

CHAIR

Baronness Genista McIntosh

Genista (Jenny) McIntosh has held a number of senior positions in major arts organisations   She  was Principal of the Guildhall School of Music & Drama from 2002-3 and Executive Director of the Royal National Theatre between 1990 and 1996 and again between 1997 and 2002. In 1997 she was briefly Chief Executive of the Royal Opera House.  Between 1972 and 1990 she held a number of posts at the Royal Shakespeare Company.  She was a founder Trustee of NESTA (National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) from 1998 to 2005 and currently serves on the Boards of the Foundation for Sport and the Arts, Southbank Sinfonia, the Roundhouse Trust, the National Opera Studio and the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Genista holds honorary doctorates from the University of York (1998), the University of Middlesex (2002) and City University (2002) and received an Honorary Fellowship from Goldsmiths College, University of London in 2003.  She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. In 1999 she was created a Life Peer, taking the title Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall, and now devotes most of her time to her work in the House of Lords.

Photographer: Sean Michael

PANELLISTS

Bill Bankes-Jones

Bill Bankes-Jones is the founder and Artistic Director of Tête à Tête, where he has explored the future of opera for over 10 years.

After training with the ITV Regional Theatre Young Director’s Scheme,  he worked for ENO, RNT, RSC, Royal Opera and Salzburg Festivals. Recent productions Include directing and translating Hansel & Gretel, Scottish Opera; directing Great Expectations, RCM/TàT; Circus Tricks, & Salad Days, TàT; Die Entführung aus dem Serail & La Cenerentola, Iford; Albert Herring & Carmelites, Trinity Laban; Twelfth Night, Oxford Shakespeare Company; and Mozart’s First Commandment, Classical Opera Company, and of course curating this festival.  Bill is also Chair of the Opera and Music Theatre Forum, the umbrella body for UK Opera companies.

www.tete-a-tete.org.uk

www.omtf.org.uk

David Gowland

David Gowland is Artistic Director of the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme.

He studied at the Royal College of Music, where he won the Ruby Hope and Major van Someren Godfrey prizes for piano accompaniment, and at the National Opera Studio, supported by the Countess of Munster Musical Trust. He joined the Glyndebourne music staff in 1987, won the 1988 Jani Strasser Award and has since continued to work there. He was Head of Music Staff at the Grand Théâtre de Genève from 1989 – 1996, assisting conductors such as Tate, Patané, Jordan, Bartoletti, Thielemann, Plasson, Elder, de Waart, Bertini and Campanella. He has worked regularly with many companies as assistant conductor/senior coach, including Opéra National de Paris, Netherlands Opera, Teatro Real di Madrid, Rome Opera, Royal Danish Opera, Teatro San Carlo di Napoli and the Aix, Orange, Salzburg and Wexford Festivals. He was senior coach on The Ring under Jeffrey Tate in Australia. He has conducted Die Dreigroschenoper for RADA. Concert work has included the Edinburgh and Aldeburgh Festivals and the BBC Proms.

He is a visiting tutor at the National Opera Studio and works regularly for the New National Theatre Young Artists Programme in Tokyo, British Youth Opera and Cardiff International Academy of Voice. He has been associated with the Young Artists Programme at the Royal Opera House since its inception in 2000, initially as Director of Musical Preparation and from 2006 as Artistic Director. In recital he has accompanied Barbara Bonney, Amanda Roocroft, Cecilia Gasdia, Denyce Graves, Martina Mussacchio, Madelyn Renée and he regularly accompanies all the singers on the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme in recitals of both song and operatic repertory.

www.roh.org.uk/about/jette-parker-young-artists-programme

Rhian Hutchings

Rhian Hutchings is the director of Welsh National Opera’s MAX department.

She was born in Newport, Gwent, studied at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, and has been working in opera for the last fifteen years. She spent three years as a staff director at English National Opera, before becoming a freelance director, working with a wide range of companies from Opera North and Garsington Opera to Music in the Round and New Youth Opera.

Rhian’s career choices have been led by her passion for new opera. She began her association with Welsh National Opera in 2003 when she ran the commissioning process for The Tailor’s Daughter, which was peformed by the Welsh National Youth Opera in 2005. For WNO MAX she has commmissioned 4 major pieces for young people, developed the Street Songs programme with communities in Wales, created WNO Extra – a bespoke audience insight programme – and is project lead for Artworks Cymru – a special initiative exploring artists who work in participatory settings.

www.wno.org.uk

Sophie Joyce

Sophie Joyce is Casting and ENO Harewood Artists Manager at English National Opera.

Born in Bedfordshire, Sophie graduated a Bachelor of Music (BMus) from Birmingham University, before taking up the position of Assistant to the Director of the Vocal Division at IMG Artists, London. During her time at IMG, Sophie worked closely with all the major opera houses, as well as such international stars as Anna Netrebko, Elina Garanča and Rolando Villazon, gaining valuable experience in the field of Artist Management, and working at the highest levels of opera.

After 2 years at IMG, Sophie joined English National Opera as Assistant Company Manager in 2006, a role she greatly enjoyed for 4 years. In 2010, Sophie decided to move into the world of opera casting, when she was invited to take up the position of Casting Administrator at ENO.

As well as her casting responsibilities at ENO, Sophie oversees all auditions and runs the ENO Harewood Artists Programme.

www.eno.org

Elaine Kidd

Elaine Kidd is Director of Opera Planning at Scottish Opera.

Her remit includes casting, scheduling and finding production teams.  Previously she was Head of Staff Directors at the Royal Opera House where she also coached on the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme.  As a director and acting tutor she has worked with a wide variety of opera and theatre companies and conservatoires including Opera Holland Park, Diva Opera, Opera Europe, GSMD and Trinity College of Music.  As a revival director she has remounted productions by Richard Jones, Graham Vick, Laurent Pelly, Katie Mitchell and Nick Hytner in opera houses worldwide.  Elaine is the acting  tutor at Abingdon Summer School for Solo Singers.

www.scottishopera.org.uk

 

Ben Rayfield

Ben Rayfield is director of Rayfield Allied.

He was born in Yorkshire and educated at Leeds Grammar School. He was awarded a choral scholarship to study Mathematics and Philosophy at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he sang in the choir under the direction of Bill Ives. After graduating in 1995, Ben was appointed as a lay-clerk in the choir of New College, Oxford, directed by Edward Higginbottom, regularly touring and recording with groups such as The King’s Consort and The Academy of Ancient Music.

On leaving Oxford in 1997, Ben embarked on a freelance career as a musician, and has enjoyed great success, having made over a hundred recordings in repertoire as diverse as medieval music on Hyperion, grand opera on Opera Rara and Chandos, contemporary repertoire including the Cannes Classical Award-winning recording of Arvo Pärt’s Passio on Naxos, as well as backing vocals for bands such as Sigur Rós, Spritualized and Gorillaz.

Particularly noted as an early music singer, Ben has regularly performed with consorts such as The Tallis Scholars, The Cardinall’s Musick and The Clerk’s Group, as well as the larger choirs of The Sixteen, The Gabrieli Consort and The English Concert.

In 2003, Ben moved into the field of artist management, firstly working closely with Sue Nicholls in the vocal department at Hazard Chase Ltd, before starting his own agency, Rayfield Artists, in 2005.  In September 2011 Rayfield Artists merged with Allied Artists Agency to form Rayfield Allied, of which he is a Director.  He is also a Director of the International Artists’ Managers Association.

www.rayfieldallied.com

Katie Tearle MBE

Katie Tearle is head of Opera and Dance at the Edition Peters Group.

She has a first class honours degree in Music, Drama and Dance from Birmingham University. After working briefly for Opera North in marketing and press, she took an MA in Music Performance Studies at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and City University before embarking upon a professional singing career, specialising in contemporary music, alongside teaching in Movement Studies at Royal Holloway College, University of London and Contemporary Vocal Work at City University.

In 1986 she founded the Education Department at Glyndebourne and subsequently led the department, recently described by The Independent as “the most imaginative opera education department in the country”, for the next 25 years. Under Katie’s leadership, Glyndebourne Education made a major contribution to the company’s presentation of new work, including the commissioning of many innovative and ground-breaking projects for young people and the community to participate in. These have included Jonathan Dove’s first three full-scale community operas – Hastings Spring (1990), Dreamdragone (1993) and In Search of Angels (1995) – which paved the way for the commissioning of Flight, Dove’s breakthrough opera, which has gone on to receive a remarkable number of performances around the globe since its Glyndebourne premiere in 1998. In 2010 Glyndebourne commissioned the main youth opera Knight Crew from composer Julian Philips and writer Nicky Singer. The creation of Knight Crew at Glyndebourne was the focus of the BBC TV series Gareth Malone Goes to Glyndebourne, which reached 2 million viewers and subsequently went on to win an International Emmy Award. As well as keeping up her own performing career (including premiering Jonathan Dove’s song cycle Ariel, which was written for her, and James MacMillan’s Búsqueda) Katie is a trustee of The Michael Tippett Musical Foundation and past chair of RESEO (the European Network of Opera Education), former Regional Council Member of Arts Council England, South East and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. In spring 2011 she was a Visiting Research Fellow at Sussex University.

In January 2012 Katie left Glyndebourne to take up a new position as Head of Opera and Dance with the Edition Peters Group, where she is developing and managing a new international opera and dance department. Katie won the Opera Ability Media International Award in November 2010 run by Leonard Cheshire Disability for her work as Head of Education for Glyndebourne for the past 25 years and was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the Birthday 2012 Honours List for services to music.

Edition Peters has been publishing music for over 200 years, since its formation in Leipzig at the opening of the 19th Century. In August 2010 the Edition Peters Group was created and incorporates Peters Germany, Peters UK and Peters USA. The Edition Peters catalogue has at its heart core content of over 12,000 titles, including editions of the majority of mainstream repertoire – from J.S. Bach to Richard Wagner. Its roster of 20th and 21st century composer includes John Cage, George Crumb, James Dillon, Jonathan Dove, Morton Feldman, Brian Ferneyhough, Mauricio Kagel, Julian Phillips and Errollyn Wallen.

www.editionpeters.com

3 thoughts on ““Gatekeepers” Panel

  1. Great idea, looking forward to attending on August 4th.

  2. I would like to attend this event – how do I do that?

    Many thanks,

    Grainne Gillis

    1. Hello there
      You can buy tickets by clicking on the button on the Singing Entrepreneur home page.

      Best wishes

      Clare

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