Lunchtime Concert: Emily Beech, soprano & Roxanna Shini Mehrabzadeh, piano

THU 21 SEP 13:05

Take time out this lunchtime and enjoy a varied programme for voice and piano.

PROGRAMME:
Mozart Il re pastore
Di tante sue procelle

Edvard Grieg Sechs Lieder
I. Gruss (Greeting)
II. Dereinst, Gedanke mein (Some day, my thought)
III. Lauf see Welt (The way of the world)
VI. Ein Traum (A Dream)

Engelbert Humperdink Hänsel und Gretal
Der Kleine Sandmann Bin Ich

Alison Bauld Tatianas Song

Libby Larsen My Antonía
I. Landscape I - From the Train
II. Antonía
III. Landscape II - Winter
IV. The Hired Girls
V. Landscape III - The Prairie Spring
VI. Antonía in the Field
VII Landscape IV - Sunset

Aref Arefki Soltaneh Ghalba (King of Hearts)

Hubert Parry My Heart is like a Singing Bird

BIOGRAPHIES:
Emily Beech is an Irish/British soprano currently studying a Masters in vocal performance at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance under the tutelage of Sophie Grimmer, where she is generously supported by a Kathleen Roberts scholarship and the John Clemence Charitable Trust. She is a Song-Easel Young Artist for 2023, and previously read Music at the University of Birmingham, graduating with a first-class degree in 2019. For Trinity Laban’s postgraduate opera scenes, Emily performed the roles of Queen Mary (Musgrave’s Mary, Queen of Scots), Rosaura (Wolf-Ferrari’s Le Donne Curiose), and Sandrina (Mozart’s La Finta Giardiniera). She takes a keen interest in contemporary classical music and collaborating with living composers, most recently performing in Trinity Laban Opera’s world premiere of Edward Jessen’s new work Syllable. Emily and her duo partner Roxanna Shini Mehrabzadeh were delighted to be finalists this year in the Lillian Ash French Song Competition and the Trinity Laban English Song Competition, coached by Eugene Asti and Helen Yorke for their duo work. Alongside her work as a musician, Emily is a fledgling opera director and facilitator; for the Irene Taylor Trust she recently helped devise a performance of music composed and inspired by the stories of those with lived experience of the criminal justice system, and she looks forward to being the Waterperry Opera Young Artist Director this summer. Emily also has extensive choral singing experience; under the baton of Simon Carrington and Simon Halsey she sang in the Birmingham University Singers, with whom she toured to Berlin and Leipzig and performed in various Proms projects. She was the inaugural Soprano Scholar for the Thames Philharmonic Choir for 2021-22, and has recently performed in masterclasses with Ailish Tynan, Susan Bullock, Fiona Kimm, and Amanda Roocroft.

British-Iranian pianist Roxanna Shini Mehrabzadeh is an accomplished performer and teacher from Cambridgeshire, now based in London. She has performed at distinguished venues across the UK and Europe including Wigmore Hall, St John’s Smith Square, West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge University, Yamaha Studios, Sala Michelangeli (Italy), The Arlberg 1800 (Austria), Konzertsaal des Augustinum (Germany), Auditoria Joaquin Rodrigo (Madrid) and Nafplio Vouleftikon (Greece). She has performed at international festivals and competitions for acclaimed pianists such as Nikolai Demidenko, Pascal Rogé, Leon McCawley, Artur Pizarro, Kathryn Stott, Graham Scott, Martino Tirimo, Julian Jacobson, Giorgia Alessandra Brustia, Peter Tuite, Charles Owen, Peter Nagy and Sergio De Simone. She was a finalist in the 2017 John Longmire Beethoven Piano Competition, in 2017 and 2018 she was a consecutive prizewinner of the Musical Odyssey Summer School and most recently, she was a finalist in the Alfred Kitchin Chopin Competition 2020 as well as the 2022 Schumann competition. As a chamber musician, Roxanna regularly performs alongside instrumentalists and vocalists, most recently at Wigmore Hall. In 2020 she graduated with First Class Honours from Trinity Laban where she is now undertaking her masters degree, studying under professor Yekaterina Lebedeva. Roxanna would like to thank The Jimmie Cross Prize Scholarship Fund, Help Musicians UK and The Ruth Walker Trust for their support in her studies.


St Alfege Church
Admission free, no ticket required