Samling Academy Singers: Sea Pictures
Sage 2 Gateshead - 15/07/22
In March 2020 I reported for EMR on a “serendipitous find” at the Sage Gateshead - masterclasses and a concert given by Samling Artists, a group of young professional singers and accompanists who’d just completed a week’s intensive training provided by the Samling Institute. There’s no specialist classical music college in the North East of England and Samling, based in Hexham, was founded some years ago to fill that gap. As well as the Artists’ programme which I saw in action two years ago, they also run the Samling Academy, which provides a nine-month long programme of weekend classes and rehearsals, for singers aged 14 to 21. Thanks to outreach visits to state schools across the region, a growing number of younger singers are successfully auditioning.
On Friday 15th July, I was delighted to attend a concert by twenty Samling Academy Singers in Sage Two, Gateshead’s splendid intimate venue for smaller-scale performances. But there was nothing small scale about the ambition, musicality and stylish presentation of this performance. The concert used Elgar’s title, Sea Pictures to present “A voyage of song and poetry to the land where corals lie,” and gave us tales of sailors, mermaids and fisherfolk, seals, a crocodile and an oyster, lovers lost at sea, and a prince who’s lost battles. And fun at the seaside.
Appropriately we began at the Sage’s front door, with ‘The Water of Tyne’. Elizabeth Poston’s arrangement is for unaccompanied voices, and, as the stage lights come up, without aid of piano or tuning fork, one singer begins and the others harmonise, apparently effortlessly. The concert is devised as a continuous entertainment, with a request for no applause between songs. Just as the opening song seemed effortless, so the cast seem to move about the stage naturally, sitting or standing to listen to each other singing, as they look cool and relaxed in their summer clothes and trainers. Of course, the music, the movement and the staging is the result of clever direction and much hard work by the young cast.
They sing different types of song but it’s clear that main focus remains on classical singing. Folk songs are mostly in arrangements for voice and piano. Isabella Theodosius gives a touching account of Britten’s setting of ‘O Waly, Waly’. Margarette Ibrahim’s soprano and Kate Long’s mezzo intertwine beautifully in Jay Althouse’s duet version of the ‘Skye Boat Song’. Laura Toomey’s lovely low mezzo can’t help but recall Kathleen Ferrier’s contralto in ‘Blow the Wind Southerly’, through the poignancy is given a new twist in the arrangement of the later verses for quartet.
Lieder form another strand in the programme. Haydn’s stirring ‘Sailor’s Song’ has a fine rendition by Sofia Nikolaiets with some nifty ornamentation in the final verse. Megan Moffit’s delivery of Schubert’s ‘Des Mädchens Klage’ is persuasive in its intensity, no translation required.
The first half is brought to a dramatic close when flashes of lightening and ominous piano rumbles herald the arrival of Hannah McKay at the back of the stage to sing ‘The Swimmer’, the last of Elgar’s Sea Pictures. This is the longest and probably the most difficult song in the programme, and she carries it off magnificently. Hannah’s a soprano and may be singing the soprano version of the music rather than the original written for the contralto Clara Butt. Nevertheless it’s clear she has a lovely mature voice, which is strong throughout the range.
The performers have been trained for tonight’s performers by exceptional teachers. Miranda Wright, a former professional singer, now Head of Classical Singing at Newcastle University is the Director, while Jo Ramadan, Music Director and pianist, has recently been assistant conductor for ‘Ariodante’ at Drottningholm and ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ at Grange Opera. Pippa Anderson, the Voice Coach, is to be commended for the clear diction throughout, in English and German, and for the work on the meaning of the words. In a nice touch, the programme contains not the lyrics but a brief personal response to each song by its performer. The songs and the poems are acted to make their meaning clear. Telling stories, both to the other performers on stage and to the audience, is at the heart of this concert.
Most of the poems are recited by one or two speakers, but Lewis Carroll’s ‘Sea Dirge’, a wildly eccentric complaint about the perils of the seaside, is a comic highlight for a large ensemble, acted out in a variety of accents and characterisations. There’s more humour when the four male singers have their own sequence just after the interval, culminating in Britten’s arrangement of the folk-song, ‘The Crocodile’. Their version is developed into a tall story competition between tenor Boris Baros and baritone Ben Ryan with choruses and rhythmic pounding provided by Alex Li and Alex Peart. Jo Ramadan’s witty accompaniment is a perfect foil.
The fun continues in ‘The Day We went to Bangor’, a vigorous ensemble number led by Anna Forbes with imagined charabanc – see the rehearsal picture. Cole Porter’s cabaret number, ‘The Tale of the Oyster’, is performed with polished nonchalance by Lotte Collins. A fellow singer mimes the nasty consequences of eating a bad one…
In contrast a group of more mystical songs ends the programme. ‘Where Corals Lie’, Elgar’s best known sea picture is sung beautifully by mezzo, Rosie McMurrow, while Tia Jordan Radix-Callixte makes the most of Bantock’s haunting ‘Song to the Seals’. Ben Ryan introduces an elegiac note to his recitation of Masefield’s ‘Sea Fever’, echoed by Emma Burke in Schubert’s ‘Aus dem Wasser zu Singen’. Parry’s setting of Tennyson’s ‘Crossing the Bar’ sung by the whole company brings the evening to a quiet close.
Individually these young singers are all talented, but what’s remarkable about this concert is the collaborative way they have been trained to work together to communicate to the audience their enjoyment of the music.
For more on the work of the Samling Institute see their website We now have the opportunity to catch some of their performances in Scotland as they have recently formed a partnership with Marchmont House near Greenlaw. Once visited by famous composers including Vaughan Williams, it was used as a venue for this spring’s Samling Artists’ Course and masterclasses, with another concert promised in early December.
