The Manchester Song Festival returns to the Stoller Hall from Friday 1 – Sunday 3 March 2024, featuring live performance from three incredible artists as well as a chance for local singers to participate and learn from vocal professionals.
Award-winning Jazz singer Cleveland Watkiss kick starts the 2024 Festival on Friday 1 March with VocalSuite, a concert blending voice and technology for a unique display of a cappella vocal talent. This uses improvisation/counterpoint harmony, electronics, breakbeat loops and basslines (all live and from his mouth) to stunning effect, creating a unique, orchestral vocal soundscape with influences ranging from classical to African rhythm, to jazz and choral music.
VocalSuite fuses voice and technology, using real-time looping to create live compositions. No two performances are ever the same. Using technology to record, then layer the voice, an orchestral piece is created that is composed right before the audience. Sometimes Cleveland even uses the audience as contributors to the piece, and he always reflects the mood and ambience of the space.
On Saturday 2 March, classical tenor Mark Padmore will begin with a series of pieces by Robert Schumann before taking audiences on a journey through the works of 20th century British composers. His programme will span the full century, including popular works by Frank Bridge, Michael Tippett and Rebecca Clarke, as well as celebrating the music of contemporary composer Tansy Davies.
Mark’s recent appearance at the Royal Opera House’s production Britten’s Death in Venice, was described as a “tour de force” and “exquisite of voice, [presenting] Aschenbach’s physical and spiritual breakdown with extraordinary detail and insight”. Other opera roles have included Captain Vere in Britten’s Billy Budd, Evangelist in a staging of St Matthew Passion for the Glyndebourne Festival and leading roles in Harrison Birtwistle The Corridor and The Cure at the Aldeburgh Festival.
Acclaimed Korean Opera star Hera Hyesang Park will close out the festival on Sunday 3 March with a blend of Korean art songs and operatic classics.
Hera Hyesang Park’s rising-star status is supported by a series of critically acclaimed performances everywhere from the Metropolitan Opera to the Glyndebourne Festival. In 2019 she won plaudits for her house debut as Musetta in Barrie Kosky’s new production of La bohème at the Komische Oper Berlin. Later in the year, her run as Rosina in Il barbiere di Siviglia at the Glyndebourne Festival was described by The Times (London) as “phenomenal”.
Alongside these performances will be a full day of participatory vocal workshops across many genres from classical to pop, musical to opera – aimed at singers of all abilities, as well as interactive sessions for families.
In addition to these workshops will be sessions on performance anxiety, how to look after your vocal health and more. For aspiring and early-career musicians, there will also be chances to talk 1-to-1 with the experts.
The Stoller Hall’s Creative and Commercial Director Fran Healey said:
“We are delighted to be bringing back Manchester Song Festival for 2024, celebrating some of the best in vocal talent with phenomenal singers performing across the weekend.
We’re particularly looking forward to welcoming singers from across the North West to our day of workshops on Saturday 2 March. If you or have ever been part of a community choir, theatre group or choral society; if you are a music student, or early-career professional; if you’re someone who loves to sing, we’d love you to join us.
We’re also thrilled to announce that as with many of The Stoller Hall’s concerts, there will be £5.50 reduced price tickets for students and under-18s for Manchester Song Festival, reflecting our organisation’s strong commitment to the next generation of musicians, artists and thinkers across Greater Manchester and beyond.”
