Soprano set to en-trance at Kintyre Music Club
A SOPRANO and clarinetist will raise the roof at Lorne and Lowland old hall next Friday.
Kintyre Music Club’s first concert of the new year features well known Scottish musicians soprano Frances Cooper and clarinetist Joanna Nicholson. They will perform their programme, Turning the Elements.
In the show they explore the theme of nature and people’s place in it by combining their own arrangements of traditional Scottish song and poetry with sublime 20th century Scottish song.
At the heart of their performance are two suites of song written especially for them in 2015 by composers Rebecca Rowe and Stuart Murray Mitchell.
Commissioned
The pair was commissioned to produce two trios of settings for new poetry from award-winning Scottish poets Jane McKie and Stewart Sanderson.
Their music will be complemented by a backdrop of inspiring photography.
Frances was born in Inverness and began her singing studies at the North East of Scotland Music School in Aberdeen with Raimund Herincx, continuing in London with the late Johanna Peters.
She was a member of the early music ensemble Fires of Love for 17 years, singing in festivals and for music societies all around the country, with three critically acclaimed recordings on the Delphian Records label.
She is also well known to music club audiences as part of the trio Triplicity.
Solo performances, and ensemble work with Cappella Nova and Dunedin Consort, have taken her to concert halls all around the UK and broadcasts on BBC radio and television.
Joanna held an exhibition scholarship at the Royal College of Music, London, where she was the winner of numerous prizes.
Freelance
Since graduating she has pursued a lively freelance career performing, broadcasting and recording with many of the UK’s finest orchestras and ensembles.
Joanna features as a soloist – notably on bass clarinet with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra at the London Proms, and with the Scottish Ensemble, performing the Finzi Clarinet Concerto.
She has been invited to play chamber music in venues including the Purcell Room and New York’s Lincoln Center.
Her compositions include the score for the dance work In Situ, which won a Herald Angel at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and several musical stories for primary school children, which are performed by her group Sonsie Music.
The concert starts at 7.30pm and tickets are £10 on the door with students and schoolchildren free.