We're delighted to announce that Carolyn Sampson has joined the Rayfield Allied roster for general management.
"Amid formidable recorded competition, Sampson is close to the top of the Frauenliebe pantheon." David Pickard Stearns, Gramophone (BIS CD: SCHUMANN Album fur Die Frau with Joseph Middleton)
“The soprano Carolyn Sampson made a marvellous soloist for Berlioz’s Les nuits d’été, her purity of tone matched by her dramatic ability to inhabit the spirit of each song in the cycle as though it were a perfectly contained world.” Simon Thompson, The Times (Performance: BERLIOZ Les nuits d’été with Scottish Chamber Orchestra, François Leleux)
“Carolyn Sampson is arguably the most experienced, assured and wide-ranging of current Bach sopranos. With this latest recital she does not disappoint. Sensitivity to the evolving line and projection of text, both of which she manages with warmth and dark-hued reflection, forms a consistent part of her delectable armoury. […] This is really worth waiting for.” Jonathan Freeman-Attwood, Gramophone Magazine (Harmonia Mundi CD: JS BACH Cantatas for Soprano, Freiburger Barokorchester, Petra Mullejans)
Equally at home on the concert and opera stages, Carolyn has enjoyed notable successes in the UK as well as throughout Europe and the US. A consummate recitalist, Carolyn Sampson appears regularly at the Wigmore Hall where she was a “featured artist” in the 14/15 season. She has given recitals at the Oxford and Leeds Lieder, Saintes and Aldeburgh Festivals as well as at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Barcelona, Freiburg, Oper Frankfurt, Pierre Boulez Saal Berlin, Vienna Konzerthaus, and a recital tour of Japan.
Carolyn has developed a partnership with the pianist Joseph Middleton over recent years. Her debut song recital disc with Joseph, 'Fleurs', was released early in 2015 featuring songs by composers from Purcell to Britten and was nominated in the solo vocal category of the Gramophone Awards. Since then they have gone on to release several further recordings for the BIS label most recently ‘Album für Die Frau. scenes from the Schumanns' Lieder’.
Alongside her longstanding relationship with the BIS label she has released multi award-winning discs for Decca, Harmonia Mundi, and Hyperion, receiving accolades including the Choc de l'Année Classica, Gramophone Magazine Editor’s Choice, BBC Music Magazine’s “Record of the Month”, an ECHO Award, and a Diapason D’or. Her recording with Ex Cathedra for Hyperion, 'A French Baroque Diva' won the recital award in the 2015 Gramophone Awards. Carolyn was also nominated for Artist of the Year in the 2017 Gramophone Awards, and her recording of Mozart’s Mass in C minor and Exsultate Jubilate with Masaaki Suzuki and Bach Collegium Japan won the Choral Award. Their subsequent recording together of Bach St Matthew Passion also won the Choral Award in the 2020 Gramophone Awards.
Plans for this season and beyond include performances with the BBC Philharmonic (Dutilleux Correspondances) a tour with Helsinki Baroque (Schumann’s Genoveva), CBSO (Poulenc Gloria), Cappella Amsterdam (Frank Martin’s Le Vin Herbe), Cleopatra Handel’s Giulio Cesare at the Palau in Barcelona and in North America Handel’s Messiah with the Handel & Haydn Society, Orchestra of St Luke at Carnegie Hall (St Matthew Passion), concerts and a recording with the Minnesota Symphony (Mahler 8) and a recital with Kristian Bezuidenhout for the Boston Early Music Festival.
Carolyn's has recently released her first solo orchestral recording in a disc of Canteloube’s Songs of the Auvergne with the Tapiloa Sinfonietta under the baton of Pascal Rophé for the BIS label. You can listen to Pastourelle, taken from the album, here.
We are thrilled to welcome Carolyn to the Rayfield Allied roster, where she will be managed by Nicki Wenham and Sophie Richardson
