The Sunshine Coast Music Society likes to feature home-grown operatic talent during their concert season. Rising star Rose Ellen Nicholls, formerly of Pender Harbour, now graduating from the University of British Columbia, had been invited back to the Coast to perform this Sunday. But two weeks ago, the diva received an invitation to sing at the prestigious 57th Wexford Festival Opera in Ireland under the artistic direction of David Agler, and she seized the opportunity. The Music Society could only wish her well.
The concert will go ahead though - with mezzo soprano Patricia Hammond on stage along with composer pianist Michael Brough. Hammond has also sung at Wexford, and she now enjoys a musical career in London where she performs from a lieder and art song repertoire. Hammond is a 1991 Elphinstone Secondary graduate who started piano at an early age. Two years ago, she enthralled a crowd at the Sunshine Coast Arts Centre with a varied selection of opera and song delivered in her smooth, rich voice.
She has appeared as an oratorio soloist in venues as varied as Leeds Town Hall, the Herodus Atticus Theatre in Athens and London's Queen Elizabeth and Royal Festival Halls, the latter two with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment under Ivan Fischer and Sir Simon Rattle respectively.
Brough, a British organist/composer who has written songs for voice and piano and a quantity of other music for church use, will be offering his own compositions including songs in the folk tradition. His professional path has taken him from Leeds University Chaplaincy organist to his current role at Holy Trinity Sloan Street in London. His songs, mostly in German, are in an expressive, tonal style that makes use of a richly romantic harmonic palette.
The concert will be at St. Hilda's Anglican Church (not Raven's Cry as originally advertised) in Sechelt this Sunday, Sept. 28, at 3 p.m. Tickets are available at the door for $10.
