Next Concert
| 13 September 2025, 7:30pm | ||
| Jâms Coleman (piano) and Claire Booth (soprano)
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| Programme
C. Ives Memories, a.
F. Poulenc Banalités (FP 107)
G. Gershwin The Man I Love (piano solo)
J. Woolrich Stendhal’s Observation
A. Schoenberg Cabaret Songs
H. Eisler An den kleinen Radioapparat
-INTERVAL-
Z. Martlew from Hotel Babylon
G. Gershwin arr. Earl Wild. Somebody Loves Me (piano solo
T. Adès Life Story
F. Poulenc La Dame de Montecarlo
Jâms Coleman From Anglesey, North Wales, Jâms Coleman is a pianist who enjoys performing as a soloist, chamber musician, and vocal accompanist. He regularly performs at prestigious festivals and venues in the UK and internationally and recent highlights include recitals at the Aldeburgh Festival, BBC Proms, Champs Hill, Cello Biënnale (Amsterdam), Cheltenham Festival, Kings Place, Leeds Lieder Festival, LSO St Luke’s, Ortús Chamber Music Festival (Cork), Oxford International Song Festival, Petworth Festival, Prussia Cove Open Chamber Music, The Royal Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), and Wigmore Hall. Jâms has a duo partnership with cellist Laura van der Heijden. Described as 'intriguing and beguiling' by The Guardian and as 'gently alluring, enigmatic and romantic' by Gramophone, their most recent album – ‘Path to the Moon’ - reached two million streams worldwide in the first week. They look forward to performing at the Wigmore Hall in November as part of the BBC Radio 3 Lunchtime recital series. Other albums include a disc of Fanny Hensel lieder for First Hand Records (recorded in Mendelssohn Haus, Leipzig), a disc of Loewe lieder with baritone Nicholas Mogg for Champs Hill, and an album of works by Pamela Harrison with James Gilchrist, Alice Neary and Robert Plane for Resonus Classics. Future projects include an album of Bridge and Britten with Maria Włoszczowska, Hélène Clément and Steffan Morris for Champs Hill Records, and an album of works by Bacewicz with the Karski Quartet for the Evil Penguin label. He regularly works with singers and instrumentalists at the top of the profession. Highlights include performances with BBC NOW, Britten Sinfonia, the Karski Quartet, and the Marmen Quartet; recitals with instrumentalists Hélène Clément, Simon Crawford-Phillips, Brett Dean, Vashti Hunter, Guy Johnston, Jonian Ilias Kadesha, Braimah Kanneh-Mason, Felix Klieser, Jack Liebeck, Amy Norrington, Jennifer Pike, Timothy Ridout, Colin Scobie, and Jonathan Stone; recitals with singers Claire Booth, Katherine Broderick, James Newby, Nicky Spence, Sir John Tomlinson, Sir Bryn Terfel, and Elizabeth Watts. Jâms read Music at Girton College, Cambridge, where he was also a Choral Scholar. He graduated with a Masters from the Royal Academy of Music and was awarded an ARAM in 2023.
Claire Booth “An actor-singer who can raise the dramatic heat as soon as she enters the stage” (Opera Now), “that most questing, resourceful and intelligent of sopranos” (Daily Telegraph), British soprano Claire Booth has been widely acclaimed for her “radiant, rapturous, wonderfully nuanced performances” and voice of “piercing purity [and] luscious richness” (The Scotsman). She is renowned for her breadth of repertoire, and for the vitality and musicianship that she brings to the operatic stage and concert platform, with a versatility that encompasses repertoire spanning from Monteverdi and Handel, through Rossini, Berg and Britten, to a fearless commitment to the music of the present day. In the 2024/25 season alone, her diverse schedule has included the premiere of Helen Grime’s “Folk” with BBC Scottish Symphony, Strauss’ Four Last Songs with Boston Philharmonic, the creation of the role of Maria Yudina in Cutler’s new opera The Death of Stalin with BCMG, plus appearances at Wigmore Hall in a solo recital ‘Cabaret!’ with Jâms Coleman and concerts celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Nash Ensemble. She has performed Kurtag’s complex Kafka Fragments in a collaboration with violinist Tamsin Waley-Cohen at the Oxford International Song Festival, and has released two new recordings commemorating Schoenberg’s 150th anniversary: a survey of his lesser-known song repertoire ‘Expressionist Music’ on Orchid Classics, and ‘Pierrot Portraits’, featuring the complete Pierrot Lunaire and works inspired by the Pierrot character from composers including Korngold, Amy Beach and Thea Musgrave, with Ensemble360 on Onyx Classics, and performs the composer’s lieder at OISF, the Glasshouse in Gateshead in collaboration with the Royal Northern Sinfonia, and at the Arnold Schönberg Center in Vienna. Recent highlights include the creation of a jazz-influenced reworking of Schumann’s song cycle Frauenliebe und Leben with pianists Alisdair Hogarth and Jason Rebello (a Britten Pears Residency project), the world premiere of Emily Howard’s Elliptics with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, and London Handel Festival’s staging of Handel cantatas at London’s Stone Nest, with critics reaching for superlatives to capture her dramatic and vocal commitment: “Her mesmerising delivery of Agrippina condotta a morire was in a class of its own […] Booth handled both text and music with powerful variety, spitting out virtuosic ornamentation, her voice terrifyingly expressive […] but her bravery and vulnerability, when all is stripped away, flayed us all.” (The Guardian). She gained notable critical acclaim as “the stunning voice of operatic isolation” for a series of “viscerally powerful” (The Times) performances of La Voix Humaine; following a streamed performance for Grange Park Opera and a video performance specially recorded under lockdown conditions for Welsh National Opera, which earned her Best Actress at the Welsh Theatre Awards, she brought Poulenc’s solo tour-de-force in a triumphant return to London’s Wigmore Hall, with Opera Today praising her “thorough assimilation of both text and music and the intelligence of her delivery. Her intonation is flawless, and her diction perfectly clear […] it is the very unvarnished quality, an honesty of expression, that is perhaps her greatest asset. Such is her portrayal that one watched mesmerised by something excruciatingly real…” While still a student at London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Booth came to international attention performing the world premiere of Sir Harrison Birtwistle’s Io Passion at the Bregenz and Aldeburgh Festivals, and creating the role of Pakriti in Jonathan Harvey’s Wagner Dream in Pierre Audi’s production for the Netherlands Opera. Subsequent roles have included Rosina in Il Barbiere di Siviglia and Elcia in Mose in Egitto for Welsh National Opera, Janacek’s Cunning Little Vixen for Garsington Opera, Romilda in Handel’s Serse for the Early Opera Company, Dorinda in Handel’s Orlando and Ellida in Craig Armstrong’s The Lady from the Sea for Scottish Opera, Nora in Vaughan Williams’ Riders to the Sea for English National Opera, Adele (Le Comte Ory) for Chelsea Opera Group, Despina for Opera Nantes-Angers, Irene in Vivaldi’s Bajazet for Irish National Opera, the title role in Handel’s Berenice and solo performances of Kurtag’s Kafka Fragments and Georg Friedrich Haas’ Atthis at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, the world premiere of Alex Woolf’s A Feast in the Time of Plague for Grange Park Opera, Anne Trulove in Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress with the City of Birmingham Symphony, Miranda in Thomas Ades’ The Tempest with Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, Nitocris in Handel’s Belshazzar for the Grange Festival, and Mrs Foran in Turnage’s The Silver Tassie with the BBC Symphony. Booth’s wide-ranging concert appearances have included Berg’s Seven Early Songs with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland and Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, Strauss’ Four Last Songs with the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie and Sinfonica de Galicia, Stravinsky’s Pulcinella with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Vivier’s Lonely Child with Ilan Volkov and the London Sinfonietta, Tippett’s A Child of Our Time with the City of Birmingham Symphony at Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie, George Benjamin’s A Mind of Winter with the Hong Kong Philharmonic and Britten’s Les Illuminations with the BBC Scottish Symphony. Booth’s two decades of collaboration with the late Oliver Knussen included her world premieres of his Requiem: Songs for Sue with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and O Hototogisu! with the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, and performances of Max in Where the Wild Things Are and Rhoda in Higglety, Pigglety, Pop! which toured from the Aldeburgh Festival via the Swedish Radio Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Gustavo Dudamel to the Barbican’s own 60th birthday celebrations for the composer. She has given over 70 world premieres of compositions by composers as diverse as Elliott Carter, Tansy Davies, Ryan Wigglesworth, MarkAntony Turnage, Charlotte Bray and Unsuk Chin, and built close associations with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Proms, the London Sinfonietta and Ensemble Intercontemporain, the Aldeburgh and Holland Festivals, as well as working with prestigious ensembles worldwide including the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Deutsches SymphonieOrchester Berlin, Boston Symphony Orchestra, and the London and Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestras and with conductors including Edward Gardner, Carlo Rizzi, Simone Young, Marcus Stenz, Yannick Nezet-Seguin and Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla. Booth’s diverse discography includes the songs of Schoenberg, Mussorgsky, Grieg and Percy Grainger with Christopher Glynn for Avie Records, Wigglesworth’s Augenlieder with the Hallé, Lucia in Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia for Decca, a world premiere recording of Durey’s fabled 12-tone vocal cycle L’Offrande Lyrique, plus melodies of Debussy and Faure with Andrew Matthew’s Owen, John Eccles’ The Judgement of Paris with Christian Curnyn’s Early Opera Company and works by Webern, Knussen, Alexander Goehr, Jonathan Dove, Charlotte Bray and Augusta Read Thomas. Booth also enjoys a burgeoning career as a radio presenter and regular contributor to BBC Radio 3’s Inside Music and Record Review programmes, and as course director for Britten Pears Arts’ Composition and Performance Residencies.
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