Masterclass announcement
The Chamber Choir is thrilled to announce that Owain Park will be leading a masterclass with the choir on Wednesday 27th February in the Music Department Concert Room between 6:30pm-8pm. Owain will be working with the choir on repertoire included in our concert on Saturday 2nd March in Durham Cathedral’s Chapter House. A main feature of this concert is Owain’s composition, Footsteps, which was commissioned by Tenebrae and first performed on 18th May 2017 in Hull at Holy Trinity Church by Tenebrae, directed by Nigel Short.
The gallery in the concert room will be open to the public where you can observe the masterclass and purchase CDs of Owain's music.
Owain Park, born in 1993, is a composer based in the United Kingdom. His works are published by Novello and have been performed internationally by ensembles including the Tallis Scholars, the Aurora Ensemble and the Norwegian Soloists’ Choir. Owain is a prize-winning Fellow of the Royal College of Organists (FRCO), and was formerly Senior Organ Scholar at Wells Cathedral and Trinity College Cambridge.
Owain began his musical journey with the piano, later becoming a chorister at St Mary Redcliffe Church in Bristol, before joining the National Youth Choir of Great Britain. He was assistant conductor of the RSCM Millennium Youth Choir from 2012-2014, working closely with David Ogden and Daniel Moult on cathedral and foreign tours and recordings.
In 2014, Owain founded The Gesualdo Six, a vocal consort specialising in the performance of renaissance polyphony. The ensemble has since gone on to perform concerts in United Kingdom and abroad and were St John’s Smith Square Young Artists 2015-16. Owain was appointed as Cambridge Chorale’s new Music Director in summer 2016.
Owain’s compositions have been awarded first prize in a number of national and international competitions, including those organised by the National Centre for Early Music (NCEM), Reverie, the Phoenix Singers’, the Bournemouth Symphony Chorus, the Jackdaws Music Trust, and A Carol for Christmas (in association with the King’s Singers and Classic FM). He has also won prizes in the BBC Young Composer of the Year, the King James Bible Awards, the HMC Young Composers’ Competition, the St George’s Bristol Carol Competition, and the ‘Sing a New Song’ carol-writing competition.
Recordings of his work have been made by Tenebrae (Nigel Short), ORA (Suzi Digby), the Choir of Wells Cathedral (Matthew Owens) and The Choir of Trinity College Cambridge (Stephen Layton). His chamber opera, The Snow Child, was performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in summer 2016. His compositions have also been broadcast on BBC Radios 3 and 4, Classic FM, and Australian, American, Norwegian, German, Danish and Swedish radio stations.
Durham University Chamber Choir presents ‘Footsteps on a Small Island’
Saturday 2nd March, 7:30pm
Chapter House, Durham Cathedral
Tickets available now at https://www.musicdurham.org/event/chamber-choir-in-the-chapter-house-2/
