Chansons d'amour à travers la Manche

Ian McFarlane presents Jennifer Witton, soprano, and Ben-San Lau, piano, in a concert for Armistice Day.

A programme specially devised by Ian McFarlane, produced and funded by McFarlane Productions, Edinburgh.

With music by Reynaldo Hahn (1875-1947) & Roger Quilter (1877-1953).

JENNIFER WITTON 

Jennifer Witton was awarded the prestigious Guildhall School of Music and Drama Gold Medal while studying at the Opera School. After singing her first roles for Glyndebourne Festival Opera, she made her title role debut in Massenet’s Cendrillon for Glyndebourne Touring Opera in 2018 and the 2019 Glyndebourne Festival. This season, Jennifer debuted with Longborough Festival Opera as Micaëla in Carmen in a production by Mathilde López, conducted by Jeremy Silver. She also sung the lead role in a workshop and recording of a new opera by Mark-Anthony Turnage and has a passion for discovering new opera and contemporary works.

On the concert platform, Jennifer has performed at the Barbican Hall, Cadogan Hall, Royal Festival Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Chichester Festivities, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, London Song Festival and the Oxford Lieder Festival. She has worked with conductors such as Marin Alsop, John Wilson, Benjamin Gernon, Rainer Hersch, Ben Glassberg, Duncan Ward and Martyn Brabbins. She has given recitals alongside pianists Simon Lepper, Iain Burnside, William Vann, Ben-San Lau, Lana Bode and Graham Johnson.

Jennifer also has a passion for theatre and debuted with the Royal Shakespeare Company performing Juno in The Tempest at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, and Barbican Theatre, London. She later toured with a production of “Like Madness is the Glory of Life” performing poetry, prose and Shakespearean song. She has also played the part of the Narrator in La boîte à joujoux (The Toy Box), a ballet score by Debussy touring various venues around the UK.

BEN-SAN LAU 

Répétiteur extraordinaire, Ben-San Lau has been in residence at the Paris Opera Academy since September 2016. King's College Cambridge  Organ scholar Lau graduated in 2012. He then specialised as an accompanist at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and at the National Opera Studio in London. In 2013, he was chosen by Graham Johnson to take part in the Song Guild Concert of Schubert Lieder at the Barbican Centre in London. He went on to play for master classes given by Gerald Finley, Benjamin Luxon and Edith Wiens.

He has performed at the Wigmore Hall, London, at the Oxford Lieder Festival, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Liszt Academy in Budapest and at La Pedrera in Barcelona. In 2014, he was awarded the Musician’s Prize by the Concert Company of the Concordia Foundation, and the Serena Nevill Prize. In 2015, he became a member of the Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme.

As a pianist and vocal coach, he has collaborated with Holland Park productions (Puccini’s 'La Bohème', 2016), British Youth Opera ('Paul Bunyan' by Britten and 'Il Matrimonio segreto' by Cimarosa 2013) and Riverside Opera ('Carmen', 2013). In 2014, he took part in a Solti Peretti master class with Richard Bonynge. At the Guildhall he worked on operas by Donizetti, Malcolm Arnold and Hans Werner Henze. 

Presented by McFarlane Productions