Singing in the 2008 Swindon Music Festival
This was the first music festival or competition I had ever entered as a soloist so what a great learning experience it was less than six months after embarking on my "career" as a soloist! Paul Turner (as Festival accompanist) accompanied me for all of the classes in which I sang and, my goodness, how lucky I was to have such a fantastic accompanist - especially when it came to singing "Erlkonig"!
I started the Festival under a bit of a cloud with a cold and sore throat. (It is a bit of problem singing tenor arias when the top end of your range suddenly disappears!) The cold was to be the bane of my life over the two weeks of the Festival, causing a delightful coughing fit half way through the "Male Solo" competition piece on the final Saturday morning! Nevertheless, by the middle of the second week at least my range had returned!
I was delighted to win three classes (Light Opera, Gilbert & Sullivan, and Lieder) and thus received the Iris Bradbury Trophy, the Janice Thompson Cup, and the Raymond Sutton Trophy, as well as a place in the Senior Vocal Championship which took place in front of a capacity audience at the Arts Centre in Old Town.
I was hugely impressed at the standard of some of the singing (my personal favourite being a breath-takingly beautiful rendition of Handel's "Parto Si" sung by Vikki Champion). The Festival provided a great performance platform and the feedback from some top-class adjudicators was priceless. What a brilliant event this was and what an excellent job is done by the Festival organizers and helpers. I certainly hope to be back for next year - the 100th Swindon Music Festival!
2008 Marlow Music Festival
In November 2008, I sang in the Marlow Music Festival, winning the Opera and Lieder classes - and coming second in the Light Opera and Show Songs sections. It would feel like more of an achievement had the class sizes been bigger, but as always, it is the adjucations and what you learn from the experience that is most important.