Small Performing Arts Event of the Year 2023

(seventh annual Greater London Enterprise Awards)

Would you like to support the LSF?

Click the link below to Donate!

The 2024 London Song Festival Summer Season:

“A Feast of English Song”
6th – 29th June 2024

All the concerts take place at Hinde Street Methodist Church W1U 2QJ in the heart of London’ West End; the nearest tube stations are Bond Street and Oxford Circus. 

Concert 1: Thursday 6th June, 7pm – Comedy Song Concert

Michael Gibson – tenor
Margarita Wood – soprano
Nigel Foster – piano

A concert that is guaranteed to have you rolling in the aisles, with songs by Flanders and Swann, Tom Lehrer, Jeremy Nicholas, Victoria Wood, Tim Minchin, Dillie Keane and many more. With tenor Michael Gibson, who is just completing the Jette Parker Young Artist Programme at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, British-Canadian soprano Margarita Wood, and LSF Director Nigel Foster on piano.

Concert 2: Friday 7th June, 7pm – A Celebration of Madeleine Dring

Kate Royal – soprano
Lotte Betts-Dean – mezzo-soprano
Nigel Foster – piano
Janine Roebuck – speaker

Madeleine Dring’s songs have only recently begun to take their deserved place at the heart of the Song repertoire. This programme, devised by LSF Director Nigel Foster, celebrates her centenary (she was born on 7th September 1923) and combines her beautiful ‘art-songs’ with the cabaret-style and humorous songs that she wrote for West End revues and the Royal College of Music Union “At Home” evenings that she had a big part in. The programme is threaded together with readings taken from her letters and diaries, to paint a picture of her vibrant and bubbly personality, which is also evident in her songs.
Kate Royal has sung leading roles at opera houses including Covent Garden, Glyndebourne, ENO, the Teatro Real Madrid and the Met in New York, as well as recitals for the Oxford International Song Festival and Leeds Lieder. Lotte Betts-Dean has recently been announced as the winner of the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Young Artist Award 2024 and is a former Young Artist of the Oxford Lieder Festival (now Oxford International Song Festival).

Concert 3: Friday 14th June, 7pm – “The South Country: A Celebration of Sussex”

Rebecca Leggett – mezzo-soprano
George Ireland – piano

Postponed from last year, the winners of the 2022 London Song Festival British Art Song Competition, selected by Sir Thomas Allen, present a programme of songs from and about Sussex, Rebecca’s home county. George Butterworth’s settings of ‘Folk Songs from Sussex’ are combined with songs by Vaughan Williams, John Ireland, Frank Bridge and others to create a tapestry in words and music to celebrate one of England’s most beautiful counties.
Rebecca Leggett is a member of the Young Artists Programme of Les Arts Florissants and a 2023/25 ‘Rising Star’ of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. George Ireland is a Young Artist of the Oxford International Festival of Song.

Concert 4: Friday 21st June, 7pm – “Ships and the Sea”

Jess Dandy – contralto
Gareth Brynmor John – baritone
Nigel Foster – piano
Simon Butteriss – speaker

This programme, devised by Nigel Foster, celebrates the centenary of the first Shipping Forecast to be broadcast on British radio. Songs by Elgar, Quilter, Finzi, Florence Price, Michael Head, John Ireland, Peter Warlock, Charles Ives, Samuel Barber, Julian Philips, Kurt Weill, Noël Coward and others are combined with readings from Kenneth Graham, Virginia Woolf, Arthur Ransome, Samuel Johnson, Shakespeare, Rabindranath Tagore, Walt Whitman, Hemingway, Bob Dylan and many more.
Jess Dandy has been called “the foremost British contralto of her generation”. She has sung at the BBC Proms, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, and in recital with Malcolm Martineau, Julius Drake, Iain Burnside and Simon Lepper. Gareth Brynmor John has sung leading roles with WNO, the Opéra Comique in Paris, Opéra de Lille, Buxton Festival and Antwerp Opera among others and at the Wigmore Hall, Royal Festival Hall, Royal Albert Hall, and for the Oxford International Song Festival and Leeds Lieder. Simon Butteriss was described as a “National Treasure” by BBC Music Magazine earlier this year. As a singer he has sung roles at Covent Garden and La Scala Milan. His film, TV and stage credits include Topsy-Turvy, She Stoops to Conquer, Goodbye Mr Chips and plays at the Albery Theatre, Old Vic, Drury Lane and for the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Concert 5: Saturday 29th June, 2pm (please note the starting time) – Prize-Winners’ Concert

Madeline Boreham – soprano
Francesca Lauri – piano

The winners of the 2023 London Song Festival Schubert Song Competition present a programme of English Song.
Madeline Boreham is an Opera Holland Park Young Artist, and a Samling Young Artist. She won the Audrey Strange Memorial Prize for Promising Young Singer at the Royal Overseas League Competition and the Royal College of Music Lieder Competition. Francesca Lauri is also the winner of the pianist prize of the Royal College of Music Lieder Competition, the Association of English Singers and Speakers Dorothy Richardson English Song Competition and the Somerset Song Piano Prize.

Location and Map