Reaching Out to a Distant Lover
celebrating the 150th anniversary of Alexander Graham Bell’s patent for the telephone
Thursday 5th November, 7pm
Hinde Street Methodist Church, London W1U 2QJ

Ellen Pearson – mezzo-soprano
Laurence Kilsby – tenor
Nigel Foster – piano

A programme exploring and celebrating the special feelings and the heartbreak of being in love with someone who is far away. This was a favourite subject of poets of the 19th and early 20th centuries, and this programme, devised by Nigel Foster, includes songs by Schubert, Wolf, Korngold, Gustav Mahler, Duparc, Roussel, Berlioz, Chaminade, Menotti, Frank Bridge, Richard Rodgers and others.

Ellen Pearson is currently a Jette Parker Young Artist at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden. She has also been an Oxford International Song Young Artist, a Wigmore Hall French Song Exchange Artist, a Samling Artist, and a Britten Pears Young Artist. She won the Loveday Song Prize at the 2025 Kathleen Ferrier Awards, and First Prize at the 2024 Ashburnham English Song Competition.
Laurence Kilsby won First Prize at the Das Lied Competition at the Heidelberger Frühling Festspiele, the Wigmore Hall/Bollinger International Song Competition and the Cesti Competition at the Innsbrucker Festwochen der Alten Musik. He has sung leading roles with Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Opéra national de Paris, Opéra national du Rhin, Opéra Comique, and at the Aix-en-Provence and Innsbruck Early Music Festivals, and at the BBC Proms.
Nigel Foster is the Director of the London Song Festival. His career as a collaborative pianist has taken him all over Europe, as well as in Asia (Japan, Malaysia), New Zealand and the Americas (USA, Colombia) as well as London’s Wigmore Hall, South Bank Centre, Royal Opera House Covent Garden (Crush Room) and St John Smith Square. He has broadcast on BBC Radio 3, Classic FM in the UK and on French, Welsh, and Greek television.