Roderick Williams, baritone
Julius Drake, piano
Charlotte Blake Alston, narrator
Cristina Garcia Martin, visual artist

Roderick Williams is one of the UK’s most sought-after baritones and is constantly in demand on the concert platform and in recital, encompassing repertoire from the baroque to world premieres.

Opera engagements have included major roles at leading opera houses worldwide including the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, English National Opera, Dutch National Opera, Dallas Opera, the Bregenz Festival and Oper Köln. He has been involved in many world premieres such as Alexander Knaifel’s Alice in Wonderland, several operas by Michel van der Aa, the title role in Robert Saxton’s The Wandering Jew, and the UK premiere of Sally Beamish’s Judas Passion with the Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment.

Recent and future concert engagements include performances with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, BBC Philharmonic, BBC Symphony, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Hallé, Britten Sinfonia, City of London Sinfonia, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Gabrieli Consort, The Sixteen, The King’s Consort, Le Concert Spirituel, Ensemble Orchestral de Paris, Berlin Philharmonic, RIAS Kammerchor, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Bayerische Rundfunk, San Francisco Symphony, Music of the Baroque Chicago, New York Philharmonic, Utah Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Sao Paulo Symphony, Bach Collegium Japan, and Singapore Symphony.

Roderick Williams is an accomplished recital artist who can be heard regularly at venues and festivals including Wigmore Hall, Kings Place, LSO St Luke’s, the Perth Concert Hall, Ludlow Song Festival, Oxford Lieder Festival, Howard Assembly Room in Leeds, Bath International Festival, Three Choirs Festival, Aldeburgh Festival, Edinburgh International Festival, the Concertgebouw and the Musikverein.  In 2019 he performed all three Schubert cycles at Wigmore Hall.   His recital programmes often feature repertoire by British composers, including many new works.  He appears frequently on BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4 as both performer and presenter.

His numerous recordings include Vaughan Williams, Berkeley and Britten operas for Chandos, and an extensive repertoire of English song with pianist Iain Burnside for Naxos.  Other recent recordings include an award-winning disc of French song with Roger Vignoles for Champs Hill Records, the three Schubert Cycles with Iain Burnside for Chandos, and recordings of Stanford and Somervell with Susie Allan for Somm.   He has also recorded Schubert’s Winter Journey in a new translation by Jeremy Samms with Christopher Glynn for Signum.  He sang Captain Balstrode / Peter Grimes with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra for Chandos (Gramophone Recording of the Year 2021).  Most recently he recorded his own arrangement of Butterworth’s A Shropshire Lad and other English repertoire with the Hallé and Sir Mark Elder, also for Chandos.

Roderick Williams is an established composer and has recently taken up the role of Composer in Association of the BBC Singers.  Commissions include a major work, World without End, for the RIAS Kammerchor and BBC Singers, as well as a commission to celebrate the centenary of the RAF.   He was Artistic Director of Leeds Lieder + in April 2016 and Artist in Residence with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra 2020-2022.  Currently he is ‘singer-in-residence’ for Music in the Round in Sheffield, presenting concerts and leading on dynamic and innovative learning and participation projects that introduce amateur singers, young and old, to performing classical song repertoire. In 2023 he was Artistic Director of the St Endellion Summer Festival, and Artist in Residence at the Aldeburgh Festival.

In 2016 he won the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Singer of the Year award, and in June 2017 was awarded an OBE for services to music. He also performed at the Coronation of King Charles III in 2023.

Pianist Julius Drake lives in London and enjoys an international reputation as one of the finest instrumentalists in his field, collaborating with many of the world’s leading artists, both in recital and on disc. His passionate interest in song has led to invitations to devise song series for Wigmore Hall, London; The Concertgebouw, Amsterdam; 92nd Street Y, New York; and the Pierre Boulez Saal, Berlin. He curates an annual series of song recitals – Julius Drake and Friends – in the historic Middle Temple Hall in London. Julius holds a Professorship at Graz University in Austria for Music and the Performing Arts, where he has a class for song pianists. He is also a Professor of Collaborative Piano at the Guildhall School of Music in London. He is regularly invited to give masterclasses worldwide.  

His many recordings include a widely acclaimed series with Gerald Finley for Hyperion Records (from which ‘Songs by Samuel Barber’, ‘Schumann: Dichterliebe & other Heine Settings’ and ‘Britten: Songs & Proverbs of William Blake’ won the 2007, 2009 and 2011 Gramophone Awards); recordings with Ian Bostridge and Alice Coote for EMI; with Joyce DiDonato, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson and Matthew Polenzani for Wigmore Live; and with Anna Prohaska for Alpha. Julius’ recording of Janáček’s ‘The Diary of One Who Disappeared’, with tenor Nicky Spence and mezzo-soprano Václava Housková for Hyperion Records, won both the Gramophone and the BBC Music Magazine Awards in 2020.

Recent concerts include three recitals in the series ‘Lied und Lyrik’ in the Boulez Saal Berlin and recital tours in the USA with Matthew Polenzani, Japan with Ian Bostridge, and European tours with Gerald Finley and Anna Prohaska.

Other highlights include Oxford International Lieder Festival with Christine Rice; the Aldeburgh Festival with Andrè Schuen; the Wigmore Hall, London with Brindley Sherratt; l’Athénée, Paris, Middle Temple Hall, London with Alan Clayton; and in Stuttgart with Günther Groissböck, as well as performances in Bath, Brugg, Basel and Rome with Ian Bostridge.

For over 30 years, Charlotte Blake Alston has graced stages in venues throughout North America and abroad, including the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Smithsonian Institution, the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, Symphony Orchestra Narrations, and regional, national, and international storytelling festivals. She is a frequent guest artist at universities, grade schools, museums, and cultural arts institutions around the country, but this former elementary school teacher also presents in day care centers and for special needs populations, as well as prisons and youth detention centers.

Charlotte Blake Alston breathes life into traditional and contemporary stories from African and African American oral and cultural traditions. Her storytelling skills were honed in childhood when her father introduced her to the work of African American poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar. Her solo performances are often enhanced with traditional instruments such as djembe, mbira, or the 21-stringed kora. In 1999, Charlotte began studying the kora and the West African history-telling traditions of Senegal, Mali, Guinea, and Guinea Bissau. Her teacher was the highly respected Senegalese griot (jali), the late Djimo Kouyate. She later resumed her studies with Malian Virtuoso Yacouba Sissoko.

In 1991, Charlotte became the first storyteller to perform with the Philadelphia Orchestra on both their family and student concert series. Thirty seasons later, in 2021 she was named The Philadelphia Orchestra’s Official Storyteller, Narrator, and Host.

Since 1994, she has been the host of “Sound All Around”, the orchestra’s preschool concert series, and continues to appear as a guest host and narrator on family, school, and subscription concerts. For 6 seasons, Charlotte hosted “Carnegie Kids”, Carnegie Hall’s Preschool concert series. In 1996, she became the host and pre-concert artist for the Carnegie Hall Family Concert Series, a role that continued for 17 consecutive years. She represented Carnegie Hall in 2003 when she hosted a series of concerts in Miyazaki, Japan with the Eddie Arron String Quartet and fellow storyteller, Motoko.

Ms. Alston has produced several commissioned works for orchestras and opera companies including original narrative texts for Carnival of the Animals and Scheherazade. She has been a commissioned librettist for The Philadelphia Orchestra and The Commonwealth Youthchoirs. The Children’s March, a 90-minute work commissioned by Singing City Choir, retells the story of the children’s crusade in Birmingham in 1963.  The work premiered to critical acclaim at the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts (PIFA) in 2013. She has also been a featured artist at both the Presidential Inaugural Festivities in Washington, DC and the Pennsylvania Gubernatorial Children’s Inaugural Celebrations in Harrisburg, PA.

Cristina Garcia Martin is a Spanish Amsterdam-based animator and illustrator. She won a Dutch Design Award for the Rijksmuseum exhibition Accessorize! and a “Gouden Apenstaartje” for the app Peter and the Wolf commissioned by the Royal Concertgebouw orchestra.

MegaMyths, her game about the Greek Gods, was nominated for a 'Gouden Apenstaartje' for the best children's website and a Digital Heritage Award 2011. She has published four children's books, three of them with Micha Wertheim (“Duimelot” and “De Hik”) and made a TV series for public broadcast VPRO, “VingerTV”. Her movie Strange Creature has been selected for several international animation festivals. She has also worked on music and theater projects with the International Delft Chamber Music Festival (where her animations for Brahms' song cycle Die Schöne Magelone originated) and Bunker Theaterzakken.