Ralph Vaughan Williams: 150th anniversary concert
Gareth John baritone
William Vann piano
VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Songs of Travel
RICHARD RODNEY BENNETT Songs before Sleep
and songs and solo piano music by BARBER, BRITTEN, HOWELLS, IVES & LEHMANN
2022 is the 150th anniversary of the birth of Ralph Vaughan Williams, one of Britain’s most beloved composers and a resident of Chelsea for many years. Alongside his famous The Lark Ascending, symphonies, operas and choral works, he wrote a huge selection of solo vocal music, much of it drawing on the influences of English folk song, a field in which his research was legendary. Vaughan Williams’s music is heard alongside a selection of English and American song composers who followed him, including the stunning song cycle Songs before Sleep by Richard Rodney Bennett. Winner of the Kathleen Ferrier Award, baritone Gareth Brynmor John studied at St John’s College, Cambridge, the Royal Academy of Music where, in his final year, he won the Royal Academy of Music Patrons’ Award, and the National Opera Studio. He is accompanied at the piano by KCMS Chairman and renowned pianist and conductor William Vann.