‘Finding a composer to write songs can be like choosing horses’.
At this year’s Music at Paxton festival, veteran baritone Roderick Williams will be premiering new work by Sarah Cattley. Her songs are “absolute winners”, he tells Ken Walton
During the summer of 2020, English baritone Roderick Williams received a call from his friend, Canadian singer and conductor Barbara Hannigan. Her message was one of concern. “With the first lockdown easing, she was aware, as I was, that those most likely to get concert bookings were established artists like ourselves,” Williams recalls. “What about those less experienced performers who really needed the work?”
Williams shared Hannigan’s anxiety. “I certainly wasn’t in financial crisis. I had a solid career behind me and had paid off my mortgage. Compare that to someone fresh to the business who’d just left college, maybe with a young family. They’d had their diary wiped; perhaps their debut at an international opera house was just about to happen and had got cancelled. They wouldn’t be the first people the Wigmore Hall or the Royal Festival Hall would turn to for the first flush of concert bookings.”
Sure enough, Williams’ own phone was already “ringing tentatively”. “Barbara’s idea was simple but brilliant,” he says. “Rather than just saying ‘yes’, I should say, ‘okay I’ll take the recital, but can I bring another artist who is going to sing along with me? They mustn’t be just a warm-up act; they must be absolutely part of the recital.’”
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