News & Features
Performer Focus: Charles Maxtone-Smith
Tell us a bit about yourself, and your training and career to date? My earliest musical training began as a member both of a local choral society and of the London Oratory Junior Choir, in which I became acquainted with Roman Catholic liturgy and music. My education...
Bach’s Band: The Viola
OBS offers people like me the platform to work intensively on solo singing in a supportive environment, and I believe it will have a fundamental impact on how a whole generation of young Oxford singers will develop
Choral Scholar Focus: Dan Gethin
OBS offers people like me the platform to work intensively on solo singing in a supportive environment, and I believe it will have a fundamental impact on how a whole generation of young Oxford singers will develop
Performer Focus: Josef Laming
Tell us a bit about yourself, and your training and career to date? My first musical training was as a chorister at Leicester Cathedral, and it wasn’t long before I started piano and then organ lessons. I was interested in the harpsichord as a teenager but regrettably...
Performer Focus: Lewis Hammond
Tell us a bit about yourself, and your training and career to date? I'm a countertenor from Maldon in Essex and I have just completed my first year of studying music at New College, Oxford. I started singing at the age of nine in my local parish church choir. When I...
Performer Focus: Joel Raymond
Tell us a bit about yourself, and your training and career to date?? I fell in love with baroque music as a child. I was very lucky my childhood recorder teacher, Sarah Fenn, was the concert manager of the English Concert, and so I was exposed to fantastic period...
Performer Focus: Aileen Thomson
It’s been about a year since we last caught up with you. Tell us what you’ve been up to? As usual, I’ve been balancing singing commitments with my full time role in fundraising and alumni relations at Christ Church. Working full time can make scheduling in time for...
Performer Focus: Sam Mitchell
“Widerstehe doch der Sünde warns and encourages the Christian to refrain from sin and strive to live a pure and godly life” It’s been about a year since we last caught up with you. Tell us what you’ve been up to? It’s been a wonderful year. I’ve had the privilege of...
Bach: The husband, the father, and the family man
Tomorrow is Father’s Day, so in this week’s newsletter we take a closer look at Bach the husband, the father, and the family man. Bach was prolific in all areas of his life – he wrote more than 215 cantatas, numerous preludes and fugues for the organ, and a good...
Did Bach die of diabetes?
The manner of Bach’s illness in his late years and his subsequent death has been a subject on which many music historians and Bach scholars have fiercely debated. This week is Diabetes Awareness Week (11 – 17 June), offering us the perfect opportunity to ask; did Bach...