Nicky Spence, Mary Bevan, Fleur Barron, William Thomas, Dylan Perez, Joseph Middleton
Biography Nicky Spence, Mary Bevan, Fleur Barron, William Thomas, Dylan Perez, Joseph Middleton
Mary Bevan
appears regularly with leading orchestras and ensembles and was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s birthday honours list 2019. She is a winner of the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Young Artist award and UK Critics’ Circle Award for Exceptional Young Talent in music. Bevan’s recordings include art song albums The Divine Muse and Voyages with pianist Joseph Middleton and Handel’s Queens and Handel in Italy with Signum Classics, Mendelssohn in Birmingham with the CBSO for Chandos, James Macmillan’s The Sun Danced with Britten Sinfonia, Vaughan Williams Symphony No.3 and Schubert Rosamunde with the BBC Philharmonic.
Fleur Barron
is a 2018 HSBC Laureate of the Aix-en-Provence Festival, a recipient of the 2021 Royal Philharmonic Society Enterprise Award, and is mentored by Barbara Hannigan. Current engagements include major roles with the Aix-en-Provence Festival, Garsington Opera, Monte-Carlo Opera, Opera Philadelphia and Arizona Opera; a U.S. recital tour with Julius Drake, a tour of Schubert’s Winterreise with Drake in Spain, further recitals for Het Concertgebouw, Oxford Lieder, Leeds Lieder, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, and others. Current and recent engagements on the orchestral platform include debuts with the Berlin Philharmonic, Munich Philharmonic, NDR Radiophilharmonie and Orquesta Filarmonica Oviedo.
Nicky Spence
Hailed recently in the Daily Telegraph as ‘a voice of real distinction’, Nicky Spence is currently an English National Opera Young Artist, having trained at London's Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the National Opera Studio.
The winner of the National Bruce Millar Opera Prize in 2010, Nicky’s diverse repertoire ranges from Handel and Mozart to Donizetti, Britten and Jonathan Dove, having collaborated with the finest orchestras on some of the world’s most major platforms. A proud Concordia Foundation Artist, Britten-Pears Young Artist, Georg Solti and Samling Scholar, his other awards include the Kathleen Ferrier Young Singers Award, the Concordia Barthel Prize, a Sybil Tutton Award, and a place in the final of the Gold Medal at the Guildhall.
2010-11 also marked Nicky’s debut for some of the UK’s most distinguished opera houses including Opera North, Opera Holland Park, Scottish Opera and English National Opera. His roles include Tom Rakewell (The Rake’s Progress), MacHeath (The Beggar’s Opera), Jaquino (Fidelio) for Opera Holland Park; Lampwick (The Adventures of Pinocchio), and Quint (The Turn of the Screw) for Opera North at the Arcola Theatre London); and more recently Baron Lummer (Intermezzo) for Scottish Opera, which the Independent called a ‘stand-out performance’. This was followed by the leading part of Brian in Nico Muhly’s Metropolitan Opera commission Two Boys, which received its world premiere at ENO and gained him uniformly outstanding reviews.
Recent concert performances include a Britten Song-Cycle Series in Aldeburgh and at Kings Place, a lecture-recital at the Howard Assembly Rooms, Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings with L’Orchestre National d’Ile de France under Gordan Nikolic, a Gala performance at the Royal Festival Hall and recitals at the Leeds and Oxford Lieder Festivals.
An experienced recording artist, Nicky has recorded for Universal Classics. For other labels he has recorded a disc of songs by Britten with Malcolm Martineau (Onyx Classics) was released in 2011. His release of premiere Hoddinott recordings brought him extensive acclaim.
Future opera plans include the role of Thomas Mason in Jenny McLeod’s opera Hohepa for New Zealand Opera and presented at the New Zealand International Arts Festival, a return to ENO for Novice (Billy Budd) and his Grange Park Opera debut as Chevalier in Les Dialogues des Carmelites.
William Thomas
is fast establishing himself as one of today’s most promising young singers. As a Jerwood Young Artist, he sang the role of Nicholas in Barber’s Vanessa at the Glyndebourne Festival. In 2019, he débuted at the Vienna State Opera as Snug in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Upcoming engagements include The Cunning Little Vixen (CBSO/Gražinytė-Tyla;) roles for the English National Opera and Glyndebourne and debuts with the Opéra de Rouen Normandie and the Opéra national de Paris. Concert and recital engagements have included Bach’s Johannes-Passion with the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique/Gardiner, Bartok’s Cantata Profana with the London Symphony Orchestra/Roth and regular appearances at The Wigmore Hall.
Dylan Perez
is a respected recitalist, chamber musician, and vocal repertoire coach. He has been a Collaborative Piano Fellow at the Royal College of Music, London and graduated from the Guildhall School and the University of Michigan, where he studied with Martin Katz. Dylan has received the Gerald Moore Prize, the Paul Hamburger Prize for Accompaniment and has participated in several international song competitions. In addition to the song world, Dylan enjoys reading, walking his dog, and going to art galleries. His next project is a complete recording of the songs of Samuel Barber for Resonus Classics.
Joseph Middleton
specialises in the art of song and was the first accompanist to win the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Young Artist Award. He is Director of Leeds Lieder, Musician in Residence at Pembroke College, Cambridge and Fellow and Professor of his alma mater, the Royal Academy of Music. Alongside the world’s finest singers, Joseph appears at major music centres including Wigmore Hall, New York’s Lincoln Centre, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Konzerthaus Vienna, Kölner Philharmonie, Philharmonie Luxembourg, Musée d’Orsay, Oji Hall Tokyo and Festivals in Aix-en-Provence, Aldeburgh, BBC Proms, Edinburgh, San Francisco, Schubertiade Hohenems and Schwarzenberg, Seoul, and Vancouver. He frequently curates his own series for BBC Radio and his critically acclaimed and fast-growing discography have won the Diapason D’or, Edison Award and Priz Caecilia.
