Rayfield Artists singers will make a very strong showing at this years BBC Proms season, with four artists taking part.
Robin Blaze returns after a highly-acclaimed performance of Bach cantatas last year with Suzuki and the Bach Collegium Japan: “The discovery of the evening was Blaze’s perfect little fragment of a solo cantata” (The Times). He performs the alto solos in Bach’s St John Passion with Sir John Eliot Gardiner and the Monteverdi Choir in Prom 51 on 24 August.
Sharing the stage as bass soloist in the St John Passion is Matthew Brook, who made his Proms debut in 2007 with Gardiner and the Buskaid Soweto String Ensemble in Campra’s Requiem, and won high praise for his Christus in the Dunedin Consort’s recent recording of the St Matthew Passion: “the outstanding Christus of Matthew Brook… is little short of masterful with the range of colour, risk and gentle courtesy he brings” (The Gramophone).
Patricia Rozario makes her impressive 8th appearance at the Proms in the UK premiere of Sir John Tavener’s Cantus Mysticus with the London Sinfonietta in Prom 56 on 27 August. With texts by Goethe and Dante, culminating in an ecstatic celebration of the Divine Feminine, this performance marks another landmark in the unique relationship between Rozario and Tavener, who has written over thirty works for her.
Also in Prom 56, David Wilson-Johnson performs Tavener’s early cantata The Whale, first heard 40 years ago under the baton of David Atherton in the London Sinfonietta’s inaugural concert, and performed with Atherton again this year to celebrate the orchestra’s 40th anniversary.
