Author: Avril Newton

Darren Jeffery

Darren Jeffery

Stour Singers are delighted that Darren Jeffery – who excelled in the title role in Handel’s Saul for us in May 2017 – accepted our invitation to be the 2017/18 Honorary Fellow.  Darren’s expressive bass baritone voice is very versatile, and he is completely at home on both the operatic stage and the concert platform.  Starting his musical training at the Royal Northern College of Music, Darren was one of the very first singers to join the Royal Opera Young Artists Programme (even singing there with Luciano Pavarotti!).

Darren has built an extensive career, singing a diversity of roles from Handel to Wagner, from Britten to Stravinsky, in some of the great opera houses of the world from our own Royal Opera House and English National Opera to Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre.  He has also sung at Glyndebourne, Garsington, and the Proms.  Based with his family in Cornwall, he can often be seen restoring Land Rovers and tinkering with tractors as well as encouraging young local singers!

Darren’s programme from now until summer next year includes a premiere at English National Opera, oratorio in Bude, Dartington, and Liverpool, singing ‘Monterone’ in Verdi’s Rigoletto at Covent Garden, Britten in Moscow, and an extensive tour of the Netherlands in the title role of Wagner’s Flying Dutchman.  Closer to us, Darren is singing at Longborough Festival Opera in July next year as the ‘Music Teacher’ in Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos.  What a full programme!

When invited to be our Honorary Fellow, Darren said he would love to accept, and was thrilled to be asked.  The thrill is ours!

Review of Handel’s Saul, May 2017

A Resounding Musical Success!

On May 13th in St. Edmund’s Church, Shipston-on-Stour, under the thorough baton of dedicated musical director Richard Emms, his Shipston choir, the Stour Singers, and the well-established, youthful chamber orchestra, Midlands-based Queen’s Park Sinfonia, performed Handel’s Oratorio Saul to the delight of all who came.  Music comes in all shapes and sizes from Pop and Rock to high Baroque, something to suit all tastes.  It can thrill, chill, move and elate us.  This programme was elating.

And the choir and audience were blessed with five extraordinary and highly professional vocal soloists!  Handel wanted to tell a famous dramatic story and it could surely not have been better told than by these five singers.  Australian soprano, Anita Watson, winner of so many international competitions, sang Saul’s daughter and lover of David, Michal, in her rich and beautiful voice, which rang out with warmth and distinction.  Tim Morgan, a young countertenor, was technically excellent and sang David with an astonishing range and richness, simply a lovely voice.  Ben Thapa, tenor, sang Jonathan and his dramatically expressive singing was equally exemplified in the other roles he took.  Baritone, Alistair Donaghue, fulfilled the voice of prophesy and other parts with clarity and with a warm and liquid tone that charmed the ear.  The commanding and explicit voice of bass baritone, Darren Jeffery, sang the tormented King Saul and filled it with strength and emotional depth and with great clarity.  What a tremendous and hugely experienced quintet of soloists to put over so much drama with such conviction!

And the choir?  It was outstanding on this occasion, both in its balanced vocal strength and interpretation.  Quick and clear on their entries, the choristers put everything they had at their vocal disposal into this moving feast, from feisty to moments of pure sorrow as in ‘Mourn Israel…‘.  They sounded very confident and appeared to be enjoying singing.

Providing the continuous musical accompaniment to all the vocal performers in Handel’s emotionally wide-ranging score was the Queen’s Park Sinfonia with its lively and dynamically expressive playing, with special praise for the woodwind… and to Rachel Bird, the choir’s accompanist, on keyboard.

This was an evening-out to remember: amazing composer, live musicians, live audience, live music on our rural doorstep.  We live in troubled times, but in such music, telling a tale going back more than three thousand years, we are reminded across centuries of our humanity and that while there’s life, there’s love and hope.  And music surely plays a deep and central role in our lives!

Ina M. Evans

Review by Richard Emms