Guildhall School of Music & Drama announces its Summer 2024 Season
’Much Ado About Nothing’ dir. Chelsea Walker. Photo by David Monteith Hodge/Photographise.
This summer, Guildhall School of Music & Drama presents a varied programme of events for the public to enjoy, including concerts, drama productions, opera and jazz.
Highlights include:
A new three-week long festival Making It will celebrate accomplishments from final year actors, musicians and production artists.
Guildhall School’s most prestigious prize, the Gold Medal, will see performances from harpist Heather Brooks, clarinettist Kosuke Shirai and double bassist Strahinja Mitrovic.
Winner of The Gold Medal 2018, Yeonjoon Yoon, presents Um [Sprouting], a concert that includes a series of original compositions and improvisations inspired by composers including Glass and Sakamoto, and the sounds and sceneries of South Korea.
Sally Cookson’s outstanding adaptation of Jane Eyre is revived by Guildhall School actors.
Director John Ramster and conductor James Henshaw unite for a production of Handel’s Alcina.
Guildhall’s Jazz Vocal Ensembles collaborate with vocal supergroup MOSS for a performance culminating their week-long teaching residency at Guildhall School’s Jazz Department.
Guildhall Session Singers give their debut performance as the newest ensemble at Guildhall School.
Newly appointed London Schools Symphony Orchestra Conductor in Residence, Enyi Okpara, conducts performance of Anna Meredith’s Nautilus.
National Open Youth Orchestra presents a programme mixing acoustic, electronic and accessible instruments.
Details of the summer season’s events can be found below.
Tuesday 11 – Friday 28 June
Making It: a new three-week festival celebrating artistry across all disciplines will come to both Silk Street and Milton Court. Events include Kaleidoscope – a range of self led performances from final year actors and the graduate exhibition from final year Production Artists. More details to be announced shortly.
Opera
Monday 3 – 10 June, Milton Court Theatre
Handel’s beloved opera, Alcina, directed by Associate Head of Vocal Studies John Ramster and conducted by James Henshaw, will see the classic tale of enchantress Alcina bewitching her way through a mystical island.
Drama
Friday 24 – Thursday 30 May, Silk Street Theatre
Based on Charlotte Brontë's classic novel, Sally Cookson’s adaptation of Jane Eyre will be directed by Victoria Moseley for a captivating and thrilling tale of Jane on her journey to find love and belonging.
Music
Guildhall Wigmore Prize Recital
Wednesday 3 April, 7:30pm, Wigmore Hall
The Guildhall Wigmore Recital Prize annually awards an exceptional musician from Guildhall School of Music & Drama with a Wigmore Hall recital.
The winner of the 2023 Guildhall Wigmore Recital Prize, soprano Ana-Carmen Balestra, gives her debut Wigmore Hall recital accompanied by pianist Aleksandra Myslek and harpist Heather Brooks.
Anthony McGill: Gran Partita with Guildhall School musicians
Friday 26 April, 7:30pm, Milton Court Concert Hall
Clarinettist Anthony McGill continues his Milton Court residency with a performance featuring Guildhall School musicians. The programme features the musicians joining McGill for a performance of Mozart’s Gran Partita and will also see the Kaleidoscope Collective feature in the first half of the programme for a performance of Coleridge-Taylor’s Clarinet Quintet.
Wednesday 1 May, 7pm, Barbican Hall
Guildhall School’s most prestigious prize for musicians, the Gold Medal, will this year see instrumentalists take centre stage. The finalists have chosen a variety of repertoire for the final, including Ginastera’s Harp Concerto performed by Heather Brooks; Copland’s Clarinet Concerto performed by Kosuke Shirai; and Rota’s Divertimento concertante for double bass performed by Strahinja Mitrovic.
BBC SO Total Immersion: Italian Radicals
Sunday 5 May, 3pm, Milton Court Concert Hall
Guildhall School joins the BBC Symphony Orchestra for an exploration of the politics, thinking and music from the 1960s and 1970s of four great radicals. This performance sees Guildhall School singers and instrumentalists perform miniatures by Berio and Maderna.
Friday 17 May, 7pm, Milton Court Concert Hall
Um [Sprouting] is a project of original works by pianist, composer, improviser and winner of the Guildhall Gold Medal 2018, Yeonjoon Yoon. Inspired by the sounds and sceneries of South Korea, he fuses his musical roots of classical music, and natal roots of Korean traditional music.
The concert begins with classical works by Bach, Chopin and Debussy, followed by contemporary composers Philip Glass and Ryuichi Sakamoto. These works flow into original compositions by Yeonjoon, interjected with improvisations featuring Korean traditional musicians on Haegeum (string) and Janggu (percussion), and ending with the three musicians playing together. This concert is supported by Arts Council Korea.
Saturday 25 May, 7:30pm, Milton Court Concert Hall
The official launch concert of Guildhall Session Singers, a new professional vocal ensemble founded by the Electronic and Produced Music Department (EPM). Under the artistic direction of Mike Roberts and musical direction of Clare Wheeler, this concert will feature a variety of specially composed works by current EPM students and staff.
Jazz
Guildhall Big Band presents Wayne Shorter’s 60s with Jean Toussaint
Thursday 16 May, 7:30pm, Milton Court Studio Theatre
This concert, presented by Guildhall Big Band and featuring tenor saxophone legend Jean Toussaint, charts Wayne Shorter’s intense period of creativity – exploring his seminal albums Night Dreamer, Juju, Speak No Evil, Adam’s Apple and Schizophrenia. The centrepiece of the concert will be a suite from 1966’s All Seeing Eye newly arranged for big band.
Guildhall Jazz Vocal Ensembles feat. MOSS
Friday 14 June, 7:30pm, Milton Court Theatre
Guildhall’s Jazz Vocal Ensembles welcome vocal super-group MOSS for a performance culminating their week-long teaching residency at Guildhall’s Jazz Department. An all-star collaboration between ECM recording artist Theo Bleckmann, New York Voices’ Peter Eldridge and Lauren Kinhan, Grammy-nominated vocal polymath Kate McGarry, and newly appointed Head of Jazz at Guildhall School, Jo Lawry; MOSS intertwines jazz, classical, pop, folk, electronica, world music and poetry into unique sonic art. MOSS is a vocal group which defies categorization, grown from friends wanting to investigate various forms of music with a modern sensibility, stepping outside of comfort zones and taking chances in arranging and composition.
Children and Young People
London Schools Symphony Orchestra
Monday 15 April, 7:30pm, Barbican Hall
The London Schools Symphony Orchestra (LSSO), London’s premiere youth orchestra, performs music inspired by folklore and fairy tales at the Barbican Hall. LSSO new Conductor in Residence, Enyi Okpara, opens the concert with a rendition of Anna Meredith’s Nautilus – a piece originally composed for electronics. Guildhall Singers join as soloists in Bartók’s psychological thriller Bluebeard’s Castle, conducted by Guildhall’s Head of Opera, Dominic Wheeler. The operatic theme continues with a venture to the Czech countryside in Janáček’s luminous interludes from The Cunning Little Vixen.
National Open Youth Orchestra: Feel the Music
Sunday 21 April, 3pm, Milton Court Concert Hall
An ensemble comprised of young disabled and non-disabled musicians present a programme mixing acoustic, electronic and accessible instruments – including the Seaboard RISE and the Clarion, the first ever digital instrument to be assessed by the ABRSM.
Alongside bold versions of audience favourites such as Anna Meredith's Nautilus, Vivaldi's 'Autumn’ from The Four Seasons and the musicians’ own choice of Morricone’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, the orchestra will also premiere music that speaks of themes close to their hearts.
Alexandra Hamilton-Ayres’s Elements invites audiences to understand the devastating impact of climate change, while Ben Lunn’s Wittgenstein’s Chorale carries the orchestra’s message of inclusion, paying homage to a virtuoso disabled pianist, Paul Wittgenstein. The programme concludes with Michael Betteridge’s Soaring through Sparks, featuring the Clarion, which some musicians play using head movement.
This concert will be relaxed for disabled and neurodivergent audiences, families, and anyone else who benefits from a less formal environment. There is also a chill out space for those who might need it. BSL interpretation is also available.
Thursday 4 July, 6pm, Milton Court Concert Hall
Led by a group of young event producers, this evening concert will round off Music Education Islington's second annual New Sounds Festival.
The concert will feature bands, ensembles and produced music from young musicians across Islington. The event will feature a curated lineup of exciting performances and new music to bring the evening to life. Musicians from across Music Education Islington’s provision will also take the stage.
Junior Guildhall Symphony Orchestra
Saturday 6 July, 6pm, Milton Court Concert Hall
Conductor Julian Clayton leads Junior Guildhall Symphony Orchestra in a special performance, where they will be joined by actors from Junior Guildhall, coordinated by Alasdair Middleton.
Free events
In addition to the above events, Guildhall School offers audiences an array of regular concerts, masterclasses, recitals and competitions which are free of charge to attend. Highlights this season include Four Decades of Jazz at Guildhall, masterclasses with Stephen Hough (piano) and Claude Delangle (saxophone), screenings of new audio-visual works inspired by The Bauhaus and the opportunity to hear premieres of new compositions with Voiceworks: Contemporary Collaboration and the EXAUDI MMus Showcase.
Visit gsmd.ac.uk/events for full listings.