Malachy Frame wins Northern Ireland Opera Voice Competition

Malachy Frame with is Festival of Voice award

Belfast-born barihunk Malachy Frame has won the Northern Ireland Opera’s Festival of Voice competition.

Frame is completing a Masters at the Royal Academy of Music in London. He previously studied at the University of Cambridge, where he read Music at Gonville and Caius College and held the Caius Fund 2011 Choral Scholarship.

Recent solo engagements have included Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem, Bach’s St Matthew Passion and Magnificat, Handel’s Messiah, Vaughan-Williams’ Fantasia on Christmas Carols and Five Mystical Songs, Duruflé and Fauré’s Requiem masses, Orff’s Carmina burana, Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder, Schumann’s Dichterliebe, and the role of Aeneas in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas.

Frame recently performed in the world premiere of Gareth Wood’s Rivers of Light, a song cycle for baritone and four harps and the UK premiere of Mischa Tangian’s I carry your heart with me.

Padraic Rowan wins Azuriales Opera Competition

Padraic Rowan

Irish bass-barihunk Padraic Rowan keeps racking up the awards, as he won the €5,000 First Prize Prize at the Azuriales Opera Competition in France. Earlier this Summer, he won the the 2016 Bernadette Greevy Bursary Award. He was also a finalist at the Maureen Lehane Vocal Awards and the Maureen Lehane Vocal Awards. He also reached the semi-finals of the the 34th International Hans Gabor Belvedere Singing Competition, he won the 2014 Wessex Glyndebourne Award, the Dramatic Cup and Tony Quigley Award and the German Government Cup at the 2013 Feis Ceoil in Dublin, and the 2013 Irene Sandford Award for Singers.

Rowan graduated from the Royal Irish Academy of Music in 2013 with a Masters in Music Performance and now studies in London. He is currently in the Young Artist program at the Les Azuriales Opera. This September, Rowa will join the Opera Studio of Oper Stuttgart in Germany, performing a number of roles during the 2016/17 season.

The Azuriales Opera Competition was started in 2003 to  promote young singers at the start of their careers. The singers perform in a Competition Concert and are evaluated by a jury. Ellie Edmonds won the €1,000 Kerry Keane Award for artists under age 26 and tenor Thobela Ntshanyana won Second Prize.

You can hear Rowan in a clip from the St Matthew Passion by clicking HERE.

Peter Kellner & Padraic Rowan advance in Dutch competition

Padraic Rowan and Peter Kellner

The final 16 singers at the 51st International Vocal Competition 's-Hertogenbosch have been announced and it includes two low voices, Peter Kellner and Padraic Rowan. The finalist were pared down from 46 singers participants from the preliminary rounds. Those taking part in the Competition will also be given the opportunity to take part in master classes and a summer school; they will also be put in contact with various opera studios, orchestras and impresarios. The final competition will be held from September 8-17, 2016.

During the 2015-16 season Slovakian bass-barihunk Peter Kellner is a member of Oper Graz, where he is singing Basilio in Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia and Osmin in Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail. In the 2014/2015 season, he performed several roles in at Oldenburgisches Staatstheater including Bartolo in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro and the title role of Handel's Hercules. In 2013, he made his debuts with the Salzburg Festival, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and at the Macao International Music Festival.

Twenty-five year old Irish barihunk Padraic Rowan graduated from the Royal Irish Academy of Music in 2013 with a Masters in Music Performance. He made his Wigmore Hall debut this November as a finalist in the Maureen Lehan Vocal Awards. Last June, he reached the semi-finals of the 34th International Hans Gabor Belvedere Singing Competition in Amsterdam. This summer, Padraic participated in the Handel Residency at the Académie du Festival d'Aix-en-Provence in France, working with renowned French conductor and harpsichordist, Emmanuelle Haïm. You can hear audio of him HERE.

The International Vocal Competition ’s-Hertogenbosch (IVC) was founded in 1954 and is the sole classical vocal competition in the Netherlands that involves oratorio and art song as well as opera, with a focus on 20th century and contemporary music. It is a unique cultural institution with long-standing connections to the province of Noord-Brabant and to the city of ’s-Hertogenbosch.

Prize winners from the last 60 years include Thomas Hampson, Jevgeni Nesterenko, Robert Holl, Elly Ameling, Jules Bastin, Measha Brueggergosman, Cora Burggraaf, John Bröcheler, Viorica Cortez, Ileana Cotrubas, Howard Haskin, Petra Lang, Yvonne Minton, Nelly Miricioiu, Jard van Nes, Vladimir Pankratov, Margriet van Reisen, Lenneke Ruiten, Wolfgang Schöne, Henk Smit, Elzbieta Szmytka, Pretty Yende and Ruth Ziesak.

You can enjoy 18 of opera's hottest me in our new 2016 Barihunks calendar. You can order before the holiday rush HERE. Proceeds will fund a song prize for baritones/basses, as well as commissions for new music. 

Marco Vassalli and Malte Roesner in the Barihunks calendar

 You can also enjoy the Marco Vassalli calendar by clicking HERE. Proceeds from the sale will go to fund his US debut in January. 

Marco Vassalli from his fundraising calendar

Aaron O'Hare wins Northern Ireland Festival of Voice Competition

Aaron O'Hare

Aaron O'Hare from Warrenpoint in County Down kept the baritone winning streak alive at the Northern Ireland Festival of Voice Competition, winning a year after Seán Boylan took top honors.  The competition returned to the historic village of Glenarm for the fifth year and included a recital from Boylan on Friday night.

O'Hare was one of five singers in the finals, which included mezzo-soprano Katie Hainbach from Dublin, sopranos Maria McGrann from Moira and Aoife O’Connell from Greystones, and fellow baritone Cormac Lawlor from Tralee.

Aaron O’Hare completed his Bachelor's Degree in Music with honors at the University of Ulster in 2011. He is now in his second year of A Masters in Music Degree at the Royal Northern College of Music after being awarded the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music Entrance Scholarship. O'Hare has worked with leading companies in Ireland, including NI Opera, North West Opera, and Wide Open Opera as well as Nevill Holt Opera in England. In 2012-13 he was a member of the Northern Ireland Opera’s Young Artist Scheme and appeared at the Oxford Lieder Festival, representing the Royal Northern College of Music.

Recent performances include: Demetrius in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Bogdanovitch in Lehar’s The Merry Widow with the Royal Northern College of Music.

Gavan Ring takes 2nd Prize at Concorso Lirico Internazionale

Gavan Ring performing in Portofino

Irish barihunk Gavan Ring, who we introduced to readers back in October 2014, took 2nd Prize at the Concorso Lirico Internazionale Vocal Competition in Portofino, which concluded last night.  Two Russian sopranos, Maria Nazarova and Karina Kheruntc, took 1st and 3rd Prize respectively. Ring was awarded €4000.

The finalists were narrowed down from a field of 120 singers from 28 countries and had 10 minutes in the final round to sing the aria of their choice. The jury was headed by Dominique Meyer, the director of the Vienna State Opera. The top three winners will be invited to audition for the
Vienna State Opera.

Gavan Ring at the 2013 Wigmore Hall/Kohn Foundation Competition:

Gavan Ring can next be seen as Bill Bobstay in Gilbert & Sullivan's HMS Pinafore at the Edinburgh International Festival opening on August 23 and Figaro in Rossini's The Barber of Seville at Opera North opening on October 7th. On November 8th, he'll perform a song recital with accompanist Simon Lepper as part of the Dublin Song Series at Hugh Lane Gallery.

Seán Boylan wins Northern Ireland Opera’s Festival of Voice

Seán Boylan

Irish barihunk Seán Boylan has won the 2014 Northern Ireland Opera’s Festival of Voice held in the historic village of Glenarm in County Antrim. The competition, is limited to singers aged 18-27 who were born in Northern Ireland or the Republic of Ireland. He is studying for his third year of his music degree at the Royal Irish Academy of Music.

Boylan has won a number of awards for his singing throughout Ireland and was a John McCormack Society scholar, as well as being named a ‘Rising Star’ of the Royal Dublin Society.

In opera, he has played the roles of Ben in Menotti's The Telephone, and Tancredi in Monteverdi's Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, as well as the title role in Mozart's Don Giovanni and scenes from his Magic Flute.

Boylan has performed throughout the U.K., including a recital at St. Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh, the Clifden Arts Festival, the Drogheda International Classical Music Series, the Abbey Theatre, the Convention Centre, Dublin, the National Concert Hall, Dublin, the home of the Irish President and at the Léran music festival.

A talented pianist and organist (who studied under renowned pianist John O'Conor), Boylan has been the subject of several television and radio broadcasts in Ireland.

You can read in interview with Seán Boylan HERE.