Patrons : Sarah Walker CBE, Yvonne Kenny AM, Graham Johnson OBE, Roger Vignoles

Artistic Director : Nigel Foster 

The London Song Festival is a registered charity number 1120046

The London Song Festival was founded in 2007 by the pianist Nigel Foster. It is dedicated  to promoting the Song repertoire, which continues to be under-valued and unappreciated in the world of vocal music that is so inevitably dominated by opera.

The London Song Festival has three principal aims and ambitions:

1) To ‘fly the flag’ for the Song repertoire. Song is still the Cinderella of the vocal music world and the London Song Festival seeks to follow in the footsteps of pianists Graham Johnson and Roger Vignoles (both Patrons of the Festival) in bringing this fantastic art form with its unique blending of music and poetry to an ever-wider audience. Each year the Festival takes a different them and uses exciting and innovative programming that combines rare and well-known material to present the repertoire in new and accessible ways. 2011 is the first year that the Festival will be exclusively devoted to English Song, and audiences will have the opportunity to fully appreciate the depth, variety and sheer genius of this wonderful music, which is so often underrated and passed over in preference to other masterpieces of the Song repertoire composed on the other side of the Channel.

2) The London Song Festival also acts as a major showcase for young singers, giving them a platform at the beginning of their careers and encouraging them to explore and perform the highways and byways of the Song repertoire. Singers this year include baritone Marcus Farnsworth, winner of the 2009 Wigmore Hall International Song Competition and the 2011 Kathleen Ferrier Song Prize, baritone Benedict Nelson, a Samling Scholar, protégé of Sir Thomas Allen and Best Newcomer’ in The Daily Telegraph’s Opera Highlights of 2009, soprano Anna Leese, New Zealand entrant for the 2011 Cardiff Singer of the World Competition, and counter-tenor Iestyn Morris, winner of the 2006 Patricia Routledge National English Song Competition and a Britten-Pears Young Artist.  

3) The educational part of the London Song Festival takes the form of master-classes. In 2011 these will be given by Ann Murray DBE and will also be devoted to English song. Singers are selected by audition to take part in one of two classes: a junior class for GCSE and A-Level students and a senior class for those at music college level.

 

The London Song Festival gratefully acknowledges the generosity and support of the following donors;

The Association of English Singers and Speakers
The Byron Society
The Coutts Charitable Trust
Drapers Charitable Fund
The Finzi Trust
Gedye and Sons Ltd
The German YMCA
The Leche Trust
The Schubert Society of Great Britain
The Peter Warlock Society
The William Alwyn Foundation