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On Wenlock Edge – Farley Music Festival

Date/Time
Tuesday 09 June 2015 at 19:00

The first concert in this year’s Farley Music Festival.

Programme includes:Farley Music Festival

  • On Wenlock Edge: Ralph Vaughan Williams setting of six songs from A E Housman’s
    A Shropshire Lad for tenor, piano and quartet
  • Ralph Vaughan Williams ‘Blake Songs’ for tenor and oboe
  • And sacred and secular music by Vaughan Williams and his contemporaries sung by the Farley Chorale 

Programme:

Mozart Divertimento in D major, K. 136
Vaughan Williams Ten Blake Songs
Bruckner Three Motets
Vaughan Williams On Wenlock Edge

Hugh Hetherington, tenor
Gaynor Alford, oboe
Alistair Watson, piano
The Wiltshire Quartet:
Bill Benham, violin
Catherine Clark Demetriadi, violin
Martin Alford, viola
Dawn Thompson, cello
Farley Chorale
directed by Simon McEnery

The Wiltshire Quartet - photo by Pete Dawes

The Wiltshire Quartet – photo by Pete Dawes

The Wiltshire Quartet

Bill Benham (violin)
Catherine Demetriadi (violin)
Martin Alford (viola)
Dawn Thompson (‘cello)

Tickets £15.00 (£10.00 for Friends of Farley Music) from Salisbury Playhouse (01722 320333), or on the door, to include an interval drink

www.salisburyplayhouse.com

Hugh Hetherington

Hugh Hetherington

Hugh Hetherington is the Decani Tenor at Salisbury Cathedral. He was the winner of the Glyndebourne Touring Opera Singer’s Award in 1981 and has since appeared with English National Opera, the Royal Opera Covent Garden, Scottish Opera, Opera North and Opera Factory.

He was educated at St John’s College Cambridge and studied singing at the Royal Northern College of Music. During a career in opera and on the concert platform, he has sung the full range of Western music, both secular and religious, from madrigals with the Consort of Musicke to Janacek’s Glagolitic Mass. He has performed concerts with Oliver Knussen, including Schnittke at the CBSO and Britten’s Owen Wingrave at Aldeburgh.

Concerts include Stainer Crucifixion in the orchestration by Barry Rose, Weill Der Kuhhandel for Radio 3, Tippett A Child of Our Time in England and Norway, Evangelist in Bach St Matthew and St John Passions in Britain and abroad, Rossini Stabat Mater, Elgar The Dream of Gerontius, The Kingdom and King Olaf, Britten Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, Les Illuminations and Nocturne, War Requiem, St Nicolas, Leighton Crucifixus, Mozart Requiem, Bruckner Te Deum, Beethoven Ninth Symphony, Missa Solemnis, Verdi Requiem, and Britten Canticles with David Halls and James Bowman.

 

Bill Benham - photo by Pete Dawes

Bill Benham – photo by Pete Dawes

Bill Benham studied the violin with John Sealey at Winchester and then Jean Pougnet and Homi Kanga. At the age of 20 he joined the Bath Festival Orchestra and at 22 the London Symphony Orchestra. At 27 he joined the Northern Sinfonia as co-leader. Two years later he returned to London where he worked as a freelance session musician. He also qualified as a teacher of Alexander Technique in 1979. In his forties he took lessons from Alfredo Campoli and gave a number of recitals. He also took up the viola in 1990. Since he retired from the London scene, he has given a number of recitals in the Salisbury area, twice playing in the Warminster Festival. He has recently become the leader of the Farley Quartet, re-launched in 2014 as the Wiltshire Quartet. He now lives in Steeple Langford and has developed an adjustable violin chin rest — the “Ergonomic Chin Rest” (see www.adjustablechinrests.co.uk) — which is especially suitable for long -necked players like himself!

 

Catherine Demetriadi – photo by Pete Dawes

Catherine C. Demetriadi began her violin studies as a student of Anne Gombosi, principal of the All Newton Music School near Boston, continuing in high school with Joe Schaaf at the Cambridge School of Weston. Her chamber music and orchestral playing took off during summers at Greenwood Music Camp in western Massachusetts.

Catherine moved to Wiltshire in 2009 to take up the post of Head of Development for the Royal School of Church Music. She plays with the Salisbury Symphony Orchestra and the Salisbury Sinfonia as well as gigging for charity events and playing in worship services. She was a founding member of the Farley Quartet along with Martin Alford, and the two of them joined forces with Bill Benham and Dawn Thompson in the autumn of 2014 to form the Wiltshire Quartet, which made its Salisbury and Dorset debuts December. She also sings with various ‘pick-up’ groups including the Farley Chorale, Poscimur and QPM and is an artist, writer, photographer.

Dawn Thompson

Dawn Thompson

Dawn Thompson (cello) started her working life as a peripatetic cello/bass teacher in Wakefield. On moving to Cheshire she added violin to her teaching practice and coached orchestras in both Crewe and Nantwich.

She moved to Wiltshire in 1994, where she was employed as a cello teacher at St Mary’s and St Margaret’s Schools in Calne, and a few years later moved to Dauntsey’s School as a teacher and Co-Ordinator of Instrumental Music. She has led the cello section in many amateur orchestras and has enjoyed conducting, composing and arranging music throughout her career. Since leaving Dauntsey’s School (in September 2011) she has developed her love of textiles, and now spends much of her time in the Steeple Ashton Textile Studios where she is a spinner, weaver and dyer.

 

Martin Alford - photo by Pete Dawes

Martin Alford – photo by Pete Dawes

Martin Alford — viola, organ, and piano — graduated as a Bachelor of Music at London

University in 1974 and then trained as a school music teacher. He moved to Wiltshire in 1978 to be Head of Music at Pewsey Vale School, where he remained until his retirement in 2012.

He has been Musical Director of Devizes Chamber Choir 1981-91, Organist and Choirmaster of St Mary’s Market Lavington 1986-2000, and Musical Director of Swindon Gilbert and Sullivan Society 1993-2006. He freelances regularly as organist, accompanist and viola player, and is Principal Viola of Salisbury Symphony Orchestra.

Tickets £15.00 (£10.00 for Friends of Farley Music) from Salisbury Playhouse (01722 320333), or on the door, to include an interval drink

www.salisburyplayhouse.com

Location
All Saints' Church