Trainees 2010/11

Sopranos
Lucinda-Mirikata Deacon
Susana Gaspar
Aoife O'Sullivan

Mezzo-sopranos
Maire Flavin
Justina Gringyte
Hanna Hipp

Tenors
Tyler Clarke
Nathan Vale
John Pierce

Baritones
Oliver Dunn
Duncan Rock

Bass
Jimmy Holliday
Ross McInroy

Repetiteurs
Sonia Ben-Santamaria
Elizabeth Rossiter

Julian Black repetiteur

Julian Black attended the Royal College of Music Junior Department and was a member of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain on French Horn from 2002-2004, playing under conductors including Marin Alsop, Sir Roger Norrington and Sir Simon Rattle. After a gap year spent working for Deutsche Grammophon in Germany, he went on to study Music at Christ’s College, Cambridge, where he played in the student orchestras and took up conducting.

At Cambridge, Julian held conductorships with the Cambridge University Musical Society orchestras and Cambridge University Symphony Orchestra, performing repertoire including Mahler’s First Symphony, Brahms’s Second Symphony and Dvořak’s Sixth and Eighth Symphonies in Cambridge and London. With Cambridge University Opera Society (CUOS), Julian music-directed several staged operatic productions, including Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel, Poulenc’s Les Mamelles de Tirésias and Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, as well as The Pirates of Penzance at the Cambridge Arts Theatre; he also repetiteured for CUOS productions of The Magic Flute and The Turn of the Screw. Julian was also Music Director for two subsequent productions at the Cambridge Arts Theatre, Anything Goes (2008) and My Fair Lady (2009).

During his time at Cambridge, Julian also worked closely with Christ’s College Chapel Choir, acting as the Assistant Music Director to David Rowland and regularly conducting them in services, public concerts and on tours to Australia, Canada, Ireland and America. He performed a wide range of choral repertoire with the choir, including a work written especially for the choir, Eurydice’s Letter by the American composer Toby Twining, the première of which Julian conducted on New York Radio. Other choral works performed include Handel’s Messiah and Bach’s St. Matthew Passion in Cambridge with student groups. Julian also studied choral conducting with Stephen Layton over the course of two years in a series of weekly sessions and masterclasses.

Upon leaving Cambridge, Julian founded the Ardente Opera Company, whom he conducted Hindemith’s Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen, Symphonie Mathis der Maler and Sancta Susanna in concert performance in Great St. Mary’s, Cambridge and St. James’s, Piccadilly in December 2008 and January 2009 respectively. In January 2010, he conducted a semi-staged production of Frank Martin’s Le Vin Herbé with Ardente, described as ‘a notable collective achievement’ by Martin Kettle in the Guardian; it was also positively reviewed in the Independent on Sunday and Opera magazine. Future plans with Ardente include a new commission for an opera by Edward Nesbit based on the Middle-English romance, King Horn.

In August 2009, Julian repetiteured for Co-Opera Co.’s production of Albert Herring under Nicholas Cleobury and he also plays for their series of weekend workshops. He looks forward to focussing on the Wagnerian repertoire as one of the repetiteurs for the Mastersingers summer course in August 2010, including playing for masterclasses run by Sir John Tomlinson and Dame Anne Evans. Julian currently studies conducting with Paul Brough and repetiteuring with Kelvin Lim and Robert Bottriell. In September 2010, he looks forward to taking up the post of Director of Music at St. Margaret’s, Putney.

NOS studies supported by a Nelly Groner Bursary, Friends of Covent Garden and a Jean Dunlop Bursary.