Serenata audiences were blown away by the incredible performances by both Katherine Jenkins on the Friday evening, and Russell Watson on Saturday.
Including songs recognisable by mainstream audiences, these crossover artists create a bridge and open classical music to wider audiences.
This August bank holiday saw the first Serenata Classical Music Festival! It was a resounding success and saw some fantastic classical and crossover performers take to the main stage. Thousands enjoyed the wonderful sound of these artists, in the stunning location of Kimmeridge, Dorset.
Mezzo-soprano Faryl Smith
Classical boyband Blake
Tenor Geoff Sewell
Violinist Ruth Palmer
Clarinettist Emma Johnson
Pianist Benjamin Grosvenor
The ‘People’s Tenor’ Russell Watson has sold millions of records worldwide of both pop and operatic-style, broken records and survived career- and life-threatening medical issues.
Watson’s ‘big break’ was in 1999 when he was invited to sing before Manchester United’s Premiership-winning game at Old Trafford. He received a standing ovation to his rendition of Nessun Dorma. Three years later, he was asked to perform at the Commonwealth Games opening ceremony with a worldwide audience of over one billion!
‘The Voice’, Russell Watson’s debut album, reached the top 5 in the national UK album chart. It smashed a world record by holding the number one spot in the classical album chart for over a year, only to be knocked off by his second album ‘Encore’! Further records were broken by Watson by his album quickly reaching number one in the States, making him the first British male to simultaneously occupy the top spots in both the UK and US. Russell has also won a number of Classical BRIT Awards for Best Classical Album, Best Classical Debut Album and Male Artist of the Year.
He has performed for some highly influential people including Tony Blair, the President of the United States and the late Pope John Paul II, who requested a private audience with Russell at the Vatican in Rome! After performing at the Windsor Castle, where the audience included Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, the Prince of Wales requested Watson to become an ambassador for his charity The Princes Trust.
After releasing his third album, Russell experiences problems with his voice.
“It was probably one of the single worst days of my life when I went to see the specialist. I told him I was having problems with my falsetto. I could sing chest notes, but I knew I was bypassing the problem. He stuck a pipe up my nose and down my throat.”
He was told he had a lump on his vocal chord which would have to be surgically removed, which would seriously damage his career and dreams:
“He was totally honest with me and said that I could lose some of my top register, he couldn’t give me any guarantees. I walked out the place in tears.”
Fortunately, Russell returned to full health after a successful operation and went on to release another album, ‘Amore Musica’ and then released a compilation of his greatest hits so far ‘The Ultimate Collection’ in 2006. This album entered the national UK charts at number two and was his fifth number one in the classical charts.
The release of his next album ‘That’s Life’ was delayed by the discovery of a pituitary brain tumour, the day before his 40th birthday.
He told The Times: “I thought the record would be my last, my legacy… Since an early age I’d had an in-built premonition, a vision that I wouldn’t make 40. For the previous seven years I’d had a recurring nightmare in which my head exploded. And here I was with a brain tumour on the eve of my 40th birthday; I thought, ‘This is it, I was right, I knew it’.”
After recovering from this, and a further regrowth of the tumour, Russell Watson is an inspiration and still going strong in his musical career. His eighth studio album ‘With Love From Russell Watson’ was released in January this year and is due to release ‘La Voce’ at the end of November.
It is a true pleasure to be having Russell at Serenata on Saturday 28th August.
To purchase weekend or day tickets, please visit Ticketmaster.
Or take advantage of our last minute offer by buying one ticket and getting another HALF PRICE! Take advantage of this offer by calling SERENATA direct on 01747 812 109 (payment via bank transfer or cheque).
Serenata is delighted to have seventeen year-old saxophone sensation Tyler Rix included in the 2010 festival line-up, accompanied by guitarist Alex Crawford. Both have recently collected their A Level results.
Discovered by record executives from BBC2’s talent programme Classical Star when he was just 14, Tyler went on to sign a £1million record deal with Universal Music. Although he didn’t win first place in the television competition, his debut album ‘Ascent’ reached the top spot in the Classical Charts.
Tyler was scouted by and signed for the West Ham Football Academy at the age of eight, and is still a keen footballer. He said he always knew he would one day have to choose between his music and football commitments, although he hadn’t thought he would be making that choice by signing a record deal on West Ham’s Upton Park football pitch!
After hearing the ‘mysterious sound’ of the instrument ‘floating from a practice class’, Tyler inquisitively started saxophone lessons at the age of nine. Within just 18 months, he had passed Grade 5 with distinction and had been awarded a scholarship at Junior Guildhall, soon progressing to the top Grade 8.
Schoolboy Tyler Rix has performed in front of thousands throughout the UK, at large concert halls such as the Barbican, Royal Festival Hall and Wales Millennium Centre and other high profile festivals and events. His performance during the BBC2 talent show Classical Stars at Queen Elizabeth Hall was named amongst the editor’s ‘Highlights of the Year’ by the renouned and generally accepted world’s best classical music magazine ‘Gramophone’.
Classical Star judges, Matthew Barley, Charles Hazlewood, Chi-chi Nwanoku and Jason Lai agreed that Tyler Rix’s outstanding raw and natural talent would ‘open up a new audience’s ears to the power and versatility of saxophone as a classical instrument’. Music Director of the talent show Academy, Matthew Barley, said “Tyler is an incredibly natural musician… He has a very rare, beautiful sound on the saxophone. Not many people can achieve that.”
Tyler feels that there isn’t much inspiration in the form of classical saxophonists, and has high aspirations: “I want to be that person that people look up to and want to listen to”.
We are pleased to have Tyler Rix performing at Serenata Festival, on August 26th, who will be accompanied by guitarist Alex Crawford – Tyler Rix Quartet member. The boys met when they were both part of the Soul Band at Dame Alice Owen’s School in Hertfordshire. Alex was suprised to hear that his first gig with the Quartet was to be with an audience of 5000 for the St Georges Day Celebrations in Trafalgar Square, after being requested by the Mayor of London.
They have been re-arranging classical pieces for saxophone and guitar especially, and are excited to play as this together for the first time at Serenata Festival! Catch them on the opening night, Thursday 26th August.
You can book day or weekend tickets at TicketMaster.
Alternatively, book tickets through Serenata direct on 01747 812 109 and take advantage of our last minute offer to buy one, get one HALF-PRICE! (Payment via bank transfer or cheque).
Katherine Jenkins – a beautiful woman with a beautiful voice. Her mezzo-soprano vocals have earned her a stack of awards and highly respectable places in both the British classical and pop music charts. Katherine’s crossover style of classical and popular music has assisted in opening the classical music genre to a new, larger, more mainstream, audience.
As a schoolgirl from a little village in the Welsh Valleys, Jenkins was a member of the Royal School of Church Music Cathedral Singers, where she won their highest award for female choristers – the Cecilia Award. As well as, and after, winning numerous awards and competitions, Katherine Jenkins won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music when she was 17. Here, she also studied four languages, graduated with honours and received a music teacher’s diploma.
In 2008, six of Katherine Jenkins’ seven studio albums scored the number one spot in the classical charts, with her first album ‘Premiere’ making her the record-breaking, fasted-selling mezzo-soprano. All of her studio albums have placed in the UK pop album charts, with five reaching number six or higher! Her fifth album ‘Rejoice’ entered the mainstream charts in 2007 at number three, beating the Spice Girls and Girls Aloud! Jenkins commented: “I never imagined when I was a young girl listening to them on the radio that I would outsell the Spice Girls”.
Also blending classical and pop music was the TV competition show Popstar to Operastar, in which Katherine was part of the panel judging established pop singers attempting opera vocals. Contestants on the show included winner Darius, Bernie Nolan, Jimmy Osmond and McFly member Danny Jones. Her fellow judges on the show were Rolando Villazon, Meat Loaf and Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen.
Jenkins has been established as a diva in the classical world, alongside stars such as Barbara Streisand and Celine Dion. She says: “When I think of a diva I think of a voice. I think of a woman who knows what she wants to do artistically. And I think of a woman that does that thing, effortlessly. I’m ready to go down that route…
“Strong women are what opera is all about.” And Katherine Jenkins is certainly a strong woman. She has performed for the Queen, the Pope and the Prime Minister, and now she will be performing for the Serenata crowd on Friday 27th August.
To purchase weekend or day tickets, please visit TicketMaster.
Or take advantage of our last minute offer by buying one ticket and getting another HALF PRICE! Take advantage of this offer by calling Serenata direct on 01747 812 109 (payment via bank transfer or cheque).
Squashed into a little vintage VW campervan on Studland beach, hiding from the rain on this far from summery August day, Blake give their thoughts about talent shows and some valuable advice to aspiring classical musicians – including those due to take compete in the festival’s talent competition ‘Serenata Stars’.
“We’re interested in this part of the festival where there is young talent, because we’re about nurturing young talent.”
As well as performing at many high-profile events, Blake has recently toured schools across the country. They performed to the schoolchildren, and also gave them “educational, behind the scenes music industry chats.”
During the school tour, Blake hosted what they called a “mini X Factor-style thing”, where they asked pupils to get up and sing in front of them and the rest of the school. They told of their amazement at how many young children did so, singing without any accompaniment or prompting.
“They didn’t just get up and sing; they stood up and sang with these amazing voices. It just shows us how much talent is out there… It just takes a little bit of nurturing to get it out of them.” Many of the children have gone to the classical boy band afterwards with thanks, commenting that they didn’t think they could do it, but after the positive reaction of their impressed peers now want to sing a lot more.
Talking of X Factor, Ollie speaks about such ever popular televised talent competitions: “I think that anything that gets talented people seen is a very good thing… The first three weeks of X Factor is like a freak show! But then suddenly it becomes very serious and the last weeks you are genuinely, genuinely seeing people who are very good at what they do. And that’s the only way they would have got there – I think it’s a brilliant thing.”
Blake with 'Serenata Stars' contestant Charlotte Hewett
“And that’s hopefully what Serenata can bring as well. Not only great performances from known artists like us, but encourage and inspire young people.
“If you want to do this then you should follow your heart. Maybe you don’t know whether you want to be the next Lady Gaga or Katherine Jenkins at this stage, but try everything and see what happens.”
The Blake boys have worked very hard to get to where they are now, and are still making a lot of effort. Jules denies that their career has been an easy ride: “There is a lot of competition, a lot of people out there performing – it’s tough. So if you want to get into it, you have got to be prepared for some really hard work. But I think that’s the same with most industries – it’s life isn’t it?
“Take the knocks, develop a hard skin and just keep on working, you will get there!”
Blake are performing at Serenata Festival on Thursday 26th August 2010.
You can get tickets now at TicketMaster.
As well as having fantastic voices, Jules, Stephen, Ollie and Humphrey of Blake all have entrepreneurial, business heads on their shoulders. “We’re lucky that we’re all quite driven characters and we like to be involved in all aspects of the business, I think it’s very important as an artist to understand the business as a whole… A lot of artists who have no idea, who just sit and wait for the work to come in, don’t understand how the system works. You can get a bit lost in the business and people take advantage of your naivety. We’re lucky that we are involved… We’re proud to be independent.”
The music industry as a whole has changed a lot recently, which Stephen sees as a “very, very, positive thing. Artists, certainly for the last 20 years, were managed to such a level they really didn’t know anything about real life, anything about real people.”
“Classical music has now come to a point where it knows it has to engage with real people. It can’t be inside opera houses, tucked away, being kept clean and tidy. This is exactly where classical music should be – on a beach, with a campervan, with the people!”
“That’s the great thing about Serenata – it’s opening up classical music to the people. There are a lot of people who like classical music, but they think ‘oh, do I really want to go and sit in the Albert Hall for two hours where I can’t move or talk?’ And ice cream’s really expensive! Or do you want to be in a more relaxed atmosphere? And actually, so many people are going to come to Serenata who want to have a few glasses of wine, nice food, maybe stay a few nights in a tent – which is maybe slightly better than you’d get at Glastonbury! – and enjoy the kind of music which they love!
“Everyone’s taste in music has become so much more eclectic in the last ten years… so it’s great to be able to give that music a forum. And what better way to do it than to come to one of the most beautiful parts of the country and enjoy a few days at Serenata!”
Classical music is “one of the few genres where you can understand things on different levels – you can understand it in a very analytical way: the history of the composer, how many children he had and how many cats he had… Or you can just listen to it in a way that, actually, is far more emotionally raw than most other kinds of music…
“Like Shrek – you can watch it as a child and see it as a fun little film with characters, or you can watch it as an adult and there are loads of clever jokes there for adults as well. And I think classical music is very much like Shrek (laughs) with the different levels!”
Unfortunately, classical music is often disregarded as only for the stereotypical older, more academic, middle and higher classes. But for Blake, and many others “it’s about the performance, it’s about moving people… it’s actually about non-intellectualising it, about taking away the academic side.
“And that’s what we’re going to do at Serenata. Serenata is about coming, enjoying, being moved and having a wonderful experience by the seaside.”
Blake are performing at Serenata Festival on Thursday 26th August 2010.
You can get tickets now at TicketMaster.
On Wednesday 4th August, the beautiful Charlotte Hewett, an entrant in this year’s Serenata talent competition, performed for an intimate crowd at the visitor’s centre, at knoll beach in Studland.
Following on from Blake’s stunning performance, Charlotte was brought forward and introduced to the crowd, looking gorgeous and poised.
Charlotte, who is an incredible young soprano with a sheer talent that is truly breathtaking decided to wow the audience with her version of ‘Nella Fantastia’ from the Mission.
Naturally the crowd’s reaction was fantastic, ending her performance with a huge round of applause and several whistles echoing right through the visitor’s centre.
Charlotte is set to be one of the top contestants to beat during the Serenata talent completion. She really has set the bar for the rest of the other entrants, so it’s sure to be an exciting competition.
About Charlotte Hewett
Since discovering her love for performing Charlotte has had a wide range of performing experiences from operas to musicals. She has been involved in productions such as Dido and Aeneas, Die Fledermaus, La Belle Helene, La Clemenza di Tito, and is soon to be involved in Carmen. As a contrast from this, she has also been involved in Musicals such as South Pacific, Lark Rise and Little Shop of Horrors. Music festivals have included The Two Moors South West of England Young Musician which was sponsored by Classic FM and Charlotte won in 2006.
She is currently studying at The Royal Northern College of Music with David Maxwell Anderson. She has received the highest end of year recital marks in her year group for her first two years as well as the highest technical mark in her second year.
She has been chosen to represent the College for many of their open days and was also selected to represent them in the Kathleen Ferrier junior competition and won the Feckleton prize and Doherty Cup for singing.
Charlotte loves singing and is frequently asked to perform at Wedding ceremonies and other special occasions and is thrilled to be involved in the Serenata Classical Music Festival.
“Once upon a time, in a land far away… Ollie and I went to school together. We’ve known each other since we were eight…” In fact it wasn’t a land that far away, it was Winchester, and we were just an hour or so south-west, on the beach in Studland. Jules and Ollie were Winchester Cathedral choirboys before classical crossover quartet Blake was just a twinkle in their eyes.
They had an “extraordinary vision” of a four piece classical boy band. It had to be four, you see – “it’s about the four part harmony thing”. So they decided to use Facebook, which was just starting to get big at the time, by sifting through and posting ads on relevant groups. Through the social networking site Ollie and Jules found two new recruits and also a manager!
When Dom Tighe left Blake to pursue his acting career, the group used social media again to fill the gap: “Originally Facebook worked for us, but we’d all just started playing around with Twitter, a lot of our fans contacted us on Twitter… Basically we thought ‘well let’s use that to try and find somebody.’” They knew they would get a large reaction from this, with a lot of people replying and wanting to be the fourth piece of the opera puzzle, so they asked for people to send CVs and examples of their singing. “We got one through from Humphrey and looked through – great singer, good looking bloke… then we realised we were looking at the wrong bloke!” The Blake boys are all good friends and love a laugh and joke. Humphrey had a lot of experience already in the industry, and told us that when he joined the group, they went “straight into the UK tour, and we just clicked… We’ve been ruling ever since!”
Jules continued: “We were very lucky it happened very quickly for us in the fact that we were asked to do the official song for the rugby world cup in 2007. We started making an album – we barely knew each other at the time – and a few months later we won Album of the Year at the Classical BRIT Awards.” This was only the second time that a debut album has won this title.
Blake has now released their third album under an independent record label they set up, Blake Records. “We’ve just been nominated for another Classical BRIT Award, and that’s the first time an independent artist has ever been nominated.”
Blake are performing at Serenata Festival on Thursday 26th August 2010.
You can get tickets now at Ticketmaster.
On Wednesday 4th August, the fantastic members of Blake (Ollie Baines, Humphrey Berney, Jules Knight and Stephen Bowman) performed for an intimate crowd at the visitors centre, situated on the beautiful knoll beach in Studland.
The classical music quartet, who are widely known as ‘the group that formed on Facebook’, were set to perform outside on the gorgeous white sands of knoll beach, following their interview promoting the Serenata festival, with the local press. However, due to the unfortunate down pour of rain, an alternative performance area was needed.
The Blake boys had their 4 microphones and audio equipment set up inside the visitor’s centre, for all the press, representatives and diners – who looked somewhat puzzled, to enjoy.
Jules, Ollie, Stephen and Humphrey began their performance with an a cappella rendition of Leonard Cohen’s ‘hallelujah’. Their performance was absolutely stunning; beautiful vocals sung with powerful emotion.
With what seemed like an impossible performance to beat, the boys went on to introduce their next song –Snow Patrol’s ‘Chasing Cars’, which was released back in 2006. Once again, the boys produced a breathtaking version of the number one hit.
Blake, who released their debut album ‘Blake’ back in November 2007 and which won the Album of the Year Award at the Classical BRIT Awards in 2008, commented that they couldn’t leave without performing a true classical music song. The boys therefore decided to close their special afternoon performance with their unique version of Pavarotti’s classic ‘Nessun Dorma’, which gained popularity through the BBC’s decision to use it as the signature tune for the TV station’s coverage of the World Cup in 1990.
The foursome perfectly demonstrated how diverse classical music can be, by incorporating core classical and contemporary songs into their performance. This echoes the ethos of the Classical Music Company and Serenata festival in particular; classical music can come in all shapes and forms and can be enjoyed by absolutely everybody.
Blake are performing at Serenata Festival on Thursday 26th August 2010.
You can get tickets now at TicketMaster.