Just One Of Those Things at Mayfield Festival

We’re delighted to be taking our programme of Cole Porter songs to the 2024 Mayfield Music Festival on Thursday 2nd May at 7.30pm

Porter’s witty lyrics and elegant melodies continue to enchant audiences today, well beyond the life of the shows for which they were first written. The range and number of great performers who have recorded their own versions of Porter’s songs demonstrates the significance of his contribution to popular music. That music’s light touch, however, conceals Porter’s personal story, including a serious horse-riding accident and his complicated life as a gay man in a less accepting era. The songs in this programme reflect on the key themes in Porter’s life and introduce lesser-known gems alongside some of his best-loved tunes.

Tickets are now on sale via the Festival website here.

It Takes Two: Stephen Sondheim at Cowbridge Music Festival

Regular colleagues Paul Sheehan (baritone) and Stephen Dickinson (piano) join me for a reprise of our Sondheim tribute programme in Cowbridge on Friday 12th January.  Sondheim’s unique ability to go to the very heart of emotional situations, his love of the dramatic stage, and his ambition to expand its form throughout his long creative life, combine in a legacy that includes some of the finest musicals of the last 65 years: West Side Story (music by Leonard Bernstein), Company, Follies, Sweeney Todd and A Little Night Music.

Our programme includes duets and solos from those great shows as well as from A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum, Anyone Can Whistle, Do I Hear A Waltz (music by Richard Rodgers), Into The Woods and Merrily We Roll Along.  The selection showcases Sondheim’s remarkable musical range and spectacular wordsmithery, his astute observations about relationships and his trademark combination of the bitingly funny and the heart-breakingly tender.

Just One of Those Things – Cole Porter at Knightsbridge and Thaxted

At the end of June 2023 we returned to the Thaxted Festival (via a friendly audience at St Paul’s Knightsbridge, pictured above) with a programme by American composer and songwriter Cole Porter.

Many of Porter’s songs have become standards noted for their witty, urbane lyrics, and many of his scores found success on Broadway and in film. He began to achieve success in the 1920s, and by the 1930s he was one of the major songwriters for the Broadway musical stage, writing the lyrics as well as the music for his songs. His numerous hit songs include ‘Night and Day’, ‘Begin the Beguine’, ‘I Get a Kick Out of You’, ‘Well, Did You Evah!’, and ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’. In the intimate setting of Thaxted’s United Reformed chapel, we were delighted to bring Cole Porter’s music to life!

Songhaven relaxed Concert

Clare McCaldin, Paul Sheehan and Stephen Dickinson

As part of Clare’s association with the church choir of St Paul’s Knightsbridge, she works with the Songhaven Charity who support the elderly and neurodiverse community in inclusive, relaxed performances of live music. This Saturday 15 April, Clare will sing with a group of colleagues in a programme of songs at the Lumen United Reform Church in Bloomsbury.

St Matthew Passion at St John’s Smith Square

Joe Fort, KCL Chapel Choir, Hanover Band and St Paul’s Knightsbridge soloists (image: Twitter)

Last night Clare joined The Choir of King’s College London and the Hanover Band in performing Bach’s monumental St Matthew Passion at St. John’s Smith Square. Director Joe Fort is also the director of music at St Paul’s Knightsbridge, in whose choir Clare holds a regular post. As designated soloist for Choir 1, Clare performed Können Tränen meiner Wangen.

Haydn Nelson Mass, Bishopwearmouth Choral Society, Sunderland

Repeating a programme that had come to the North East last Autumn, Clare returned to Northumberland to sing with the Bishopwearmouth Choral Society in a performance of Haydn’s Nelson Mass alongside three colleagues and on a bill that featured a favourite performer from the area, Bradley Creswick, playing Beethoven’s Violin Concerto.

In Sunderland Minster on this occasion, Haydn’s fulsome Te Deum was also on the programme and clearly enjoyed by performers and audience alike under the direction of conductor David Murray.

The previous performance was given at Hexham Abbey as part of their eponymous Festival, pictured below:

Mahler 4 with the Bridgewater Sinfonia

Clare takes a curtain call with Steve Joyce Myall and the Bridgewater Sinfonia

It’s been an unrelentingly cold start to the year and the chill drove through into the start of March. It was going to take a special sort of concert to warm through St Peter’s Church, Berkhamstead… but, of course, that’s exactly what the Bridgewater Sinfonia managed to rustle up, under the clubbable direction of conductor Steve Joyce Myall.

The first half was a strong account of Brahms’ Violin Concerto, forging ahead under the bow of Nathaniel Anderson-Frank. Clare was involved in the ambitious second half performance of Mahler’s 4th Symphony, which scores its final movement with a high solo voice. The song Das himmlische Leben (The Heavenly Life) from Des Knaben Wunderhorn is an unburdened reflection on life on earth, which brings a particular glow to the previous, bucolic movements that the considerable and committed audience clearly appreciated.

Sondheim at the Thaxted Festival

It has been wonderful to return to performing programmes specially chosen for friends and familiar festivals in the summer. Our delight at revisiting some of our favourite songs and duets by Stephen Sondheim was bittersweet though. Quite apart from the headache of having too much wonderful material to fit into an evening’s programme, the whole event was tempered by news of Sondheim’s death at the end of the previous year (just as we were beginning to plan).

Nonetheless, we were delighted to come together with an enthusiastic and knowledgeable audience in Thaxted on 2 July for a mixed programme of Sondheim’s erudite, grown-up and occasionally naughty lyric art. We already have plans to return with songs by Cole Porter next year.

Postscript: We repeated the programme at the Club for Acts and Actors, Covent Garden a month later. It was lovely to bring this programme home to the West End with Stephen Dickinson, where I and baritone Paul Sheehan spend so much of our performing life!

Performances affected by Coronavirus crisis

Since the restrictions to public life forced upon us by the Coronavirus pandemic crisis, some McCaldin Arts performances have been cancelled.

Please check McCaldin Arts social media, or keep an eye on Clare McCaldin’s website’s Forthcoming (or diary) page for more information.

Please look after yourself and one another. We look forward to seeing you – and performing for you – again in future.