Performances

In The Painted Fall, Imogen Emmett and Laura Moisey Gray combine harp, viola and voice to politely take the mothballs off the Bard, linking the songs of Shakespeare’s day with contemporary re-takes on similar themes, putting Morley and Dowland alongside Taylor Swift and Elvis. It highlights classics and polishes up contemporary composers with delightful delicacy.

 

Both performers trained initially at Trinity Laban Conservatoire and between them have a wonderfully diverse range of performances – at King’s Place, Cadogan Hall, the Royal Albert Hall, the Southbank Centre, Ronnie Scott’s and the Theatre Royal. And now they add the Shakespeare in Music Festival in Stratford. 

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​​Gerard Lim is an international award-winning conductor, who has worked with many choirs, including the BBC Singers. He holds an MMus from the Royal Academy of Music and also from the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory in Singapore. 

Prior to moving to the UK, Gerard was for nine years director of music for a church choir and conducted several masses for the Archdiocese of Singapore. He is also co-founder of Chroma, a Singapore collective of singers presenting thematic choral programmes.

Gerard was conducting scholar at Westminster Cathedral from 2023-2024 and now conducts the Westminster Cathedral Junior Voices. He is Music Director of the London Concord Singers as well as the Arcadian Singers of Oxford.

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Founded in 1976 as a madrigal choir, The Arcadian Singers are Oxford's premier independent chamber choir, providing a platform for young singers and excellent music-making.  The choir participates in a wide range of musical ventures both in and outside the city.  Its programming is both innovative and eclectic, ranging from early to contemporary choral music and including commission works by both young and established composers.  The choir has recoded three successful CDs, premiered several contemporary works and broadcast on BBC Radio 3.

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Bruce O’Neil is the former Head of Music for the Royal Shakespeare Company. He was Music Director & Supervisor for over 50 RSC productions, including their global hit Matilda, and Shakespeare Live!, a BBC TV live broadcast from the Royal Shakespeare Theatre marking the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death in 2016, which was nominated for a BAFTA Television award.

Since 2013 he has been Music Supervisor of the RSC’s Music & Speech recordings, comprising music commissioned by the RSC for every Shakespeare play, including scores composed for the recent survey through the canon between 2013 – 2022 as well as music held at Shakespeare Birthplace Trust archive, composed for productions in Stratford throughout the 20th Century.​​​​​​​​​

George Bernard Shaw put Shakespeare on stage in his play The Dark Lady of the Sonnets, and so did Philip Hagemann in his opera of the same name. Murray Rosenthal arranged the lyrics for the opera and – incidentally – became vice-chair of the Shaw Society along the way. He comes from New York with three Tony Awards from Broadway for production to his credit, as well as a distinguished earlier career in dentistry that taught him more about the vocal cords more vital for stage performance than you probably want to know.  Murray directs the opera with Paul Beech directing the play.

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Paul has a passion for both Shakespeare and Shaw, fostered by fine productions of all of Shakespeare’s and many of Shaw’s plays.  Even before he became a professional actor he directed three Shakespeare favourites - The Comedy of Errors, King John and Titus Andronicus, the latter with a cast of over 100 enthusiastic students.  His major professional Shakespeare performance was as King Lear in a Jonathan Miller production of the play, and among his Shaw performances as The Emperor in Androcles and the Lion.