Conor Mitchell is a Northern Irish composer, librettist and theatre-maker. [1]
His play, The Dummy Tree, was commissioned by the Royal National Theatre for their 2009 New Connections series. [2]
Conor has been a great supporter of Youth Music Theatre UK and has received several commissions from them including Missing Mel, Goblin Market, Eight, The Dark Tower and Barrack Room Ballads.
He split first place in the Stephen Sondheim Society's Student Performer of the Year Competition for a song he wrote entitled What Kind of Life Is This, Masha?. He split the new song competition prize with Gwenyth Herbert's Lovely London Town. [3]
In 2012, he was commissioned by the London Gay Men's Chorus for a piece to mark the choir's 21st anniversary. With book written by Mark Ravenhill, the piece, entitled Shadow Time, explores the evolution of mentalities in respect of homosexuality in the lifetime of the Chorus. The piece premiered at the Royal Festival Hall, on 6 May 2012 during the Chorus' summer concert: A Band of Brothers. [4]
Goblin Market is a narrative poem by Christina Rossetti. It tells the story of Laura and Lizzie who are tempted with fruit by goblin merchants. In a letter to her publisher, Rossetti claimed that the poem, which is interpreted frequently as having features of remarkably sexual imagery, was not meant for children. However, in public Rossetti often stated that it was intended for children, and went on to write many children's poems. When it appeared in her first volume of poetry, Goblin Market and Other Poems, it was illustrated by her brother, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
Barbara Cook was an American actress and singer who first came to prominence in the 1950s as the lead in the original Broadway musicals Plain and Fancy (1955), Candide (1956) and The Music Man (1957) among others, winning a Tony Award for the last. She continued performing mostly in theatre until the mid-1970s, when she began a second career as a cabaret and concert singer. She also made numerous recordings.
Rebecca Caine is a Canadian light lyric soprano, and musical theatre performer.
David Lang is an American composer living in New York City. Co-founder of the musical collective Bang on a Can, he was awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Music for The Little Match Girl Passion, which went on to win a 2010 Grammy Award for Best Small Ensemble Performance by Paul Hillier and Theatre of Voices. Lang was nominated for an Academy Award for "Simple Song #3" from the film Youth.
London Gay Men's Chorus is a gay choir that was founded in 1991 by a group of nine gay men. The group now has around 200 singing members at any one time and over 300 members in total.
Mark Ravenhill is an English playwright, actor and journalist.
The Frogs is a musical "freely adapted" by Stephen Sondheim and Burt Shevelove from The Frogs, an Ancient Greek comedy by Aristophanes. In the musical, Dionysos, despairing of the quality of living dramatists, travels to Hades to bring George Bernard Shaw back from the dead. William Shakespeare competes with Shaw for the title of best playwright, which he wins. Dionysos brings Shakespeare back to the world of the living in the hope that art can save civilization.
Tom Jones is a comic opera in three acts by Edward German founded upon Henry Fielding's 1749 novel, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, with a libretto by Robert Courtneidge and Alexander M. Thompson and lyrics by Charles H. Taylor.
Kerry Andrew is an English composer, performer and author.
The Lyric Theatre, or simply The Lyric, is the principal, full-time producing theatre in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
Merrily We Roll Along is a 1981 American musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by George Furth. It is based on the 1934 play of the same name by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart.
Ormeau Road is a road in south Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland. Ormeau Park is adjacent to it. It forms part of the A24.
The Royal Philharmonic Society Music Awards are given annually for live classical music-making in the United Kingdom. The awards were first held in 1989 and are independent of any commercial interest.
Ann Morrison is an American actress, best known for her Broadway debut as Mary Flynn in the Stephen Sondheim/George Furth musical, Merrily We Roll Along directed by Harold Prince for which she won the 1982 Theatre World Award. Off-Broadway she played Lizzie in the highly acclaimed Polly Pen/Peggy Harmon musical Goblin Market which garnered her a 1986 Drama Desk Award Nomination as Best Actress in a Musical and a Best Plays Theatrical Yearbook Citation as Best Actress in a Musical.
Connections is the Royal National Theatre in London's annual youth theatre festival. It was founded in 1995 and sponsored by Royal Dutch Shell until 2007 when the Bank of America took over the sponsorship. The plays are also published by the National Theatre each year.
Gavin Carr is a British conductor and baritone working with major choruses in the UK and appearing in opera and concert in the UK and around the globe.
Northern Ireland Opera is Northern Ireland's national opera company.
The New York City Gay Men's Chorus is a choral organization in New York City that has been presenting an annual concert season for more than four decades.
British Youth Music Theatre (BYMT), formerly Youth Music Theatre UK, is a UK-based national performing arts organisation founded in December 2003. BYMT provides music theatre training to young people aged 11–21 and a stepping stone to drama school or conservatoire. Members can join either through auditions in January and February onto productions or, without audition, onto summer camps. Most of its productions and summer camps are residential and situated around the UK with productions taking place in both regional and London theatres.