What our Rising Stars have been singing (and listening to) recently

Our new cohort of Rising Stars of the Enlightenment for 2019-21 has just been announced. We asked them 1. What's the last piece of music you listened to? 2. What's your favourite piece to sing? 3. If you could only listen to one composer for the rest of your life, who would it be? We've compiled the answers into the Spotify playlist below.

Zoe Brookshaw (soprano)
1. The Moana soundtrack
2. “Any and all of the Bach Motets”.
3. J.S. Bach

Guy Cutting (tenor)
1. Lately Stevie Wonder
2. “Bach’s St Matthew Passion has to be up there, although it’s vocally exhausting so perhaps not. Brahms’ songs are so wonderfully lyrical and therefore a pleasure to sing.”
3. Tchaikovsky or Mahler.

Bethany Horak-Hallett (mezzo soprano)
1. Restless in Thoughts John Eccles
2. ‘Se bramate d’amar, chi vi sdenga’ from Handel’s Serse
3. “Am I allowed to say Prince? If not, then Dvořák”.

Hugo Hymas (tenor)
1. Nevermind Dennis Lloyd
2. “Bach’s St Matthew Passion, because I know it so well and yet there’s still so much to be explored.”
3. “I’d have to say the best of The Beatles. But from classical music, Bach – particularly the Violin Sonatas and Partitas performed by Alina Ibragimova.”

Sinead O’Kelly (mezzo soprano)
1. Waterfalls TLC
2. “Anything with coloratura. At the minute ‘Dopo un’orrida procella’ from Vivaldi’s Gloria, which I’m currently learning for a job later this year!
3. “I thought about this one for ages and debated other composers, but the name I kept circling back to was Mozart.”

Dominic Sedgwick (baritone)
1. Pelléas et Mélisande Debussy
2. Billy Budd Britten
3. Strauss

Hugo Hymas, tenor, Rising Star of the Enlightenment
"I’d have to say the best of The Beatles. But from classical music, Bach – particularly the Violin Sonatas and Partitas performed by Alina Ibragimova."
Hugo Hymas, tenor, Rising Star of the Enlightenment