Small Performing Arts Event of the Year 2023

(seventh annual Greater London Enterprise Awards)

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The 2025 London Song Festival:

Women, as composers, as poets, and as visionaries and pioneers who changed the world

All the concerts take place at Hinde Street Methodist Church W1U 2QJ in the heart of London’ West End; the nearest tube stations are Bond Street and Oxford Circus. 

Concert 1: The Boulanger Sisters - Friday 17th October 7pm
Katie Bray - mezzo-soprano
Guy Cutting - tenor
Nigel Foster - piano

The Boulanger sisters, Nadia and Lili, were both pioneers; Lili was the first women to win the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1913, and Nadia was the first woman to conduct many major orchestras, including the BBC Symphony, the Hallé, the New York Philharmonic and the Boston Symphony. Both sisters’ composing careers were short-lived; Lili died of tuberculosis in 1918, aged just 24, and Nadia stopped composing in 1922 to concentrate on her teaching career (her students included Aaron Copland, Lennox Berkeley, Elliott Carter and Philip Glass), but in the first two decades of the 20th century they wrote many extraordinarily beautiful songs. This programme includes extracts from their song-cycles, Les Heures Claires (Nadia) and Clairières dans le Ciel (Lili), together with many other gems of Song.

Katie Bray won the Dame Joan Sutherland Audience Prize at Cardiff Singer of the World, and has since sung leading roles for English National Opera, Welsh National Opera, Scottish Opera and Opera Holland Park. She has sung with orchestras including London Philharmonic, Hallé, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Britten Sinfonia and Orchestre de Chambre de Paris, and in recital for the Oxford International Song, Glenarm, and Ryedale Festivals.
Guy Cutting has sung at La Scala Milan, the BBC Proms, The Philharmonie Berlin, Tonhalle Zurich, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg and the Concertgebouw Amsterdam and in recital all over Europe.
Nigel Foster has performed at Wigmore Hall, the South Bank Centre, Barbican Centre, Royal Opera House Covent Garden (Crush Bar) and across Europe as well as in North and South America, Japan, Malaysia and New Zealand, playing for singers including Roderick Williams, Dame Sarah Connolly, Nicky Spence, Nadine Benjamin, Kate Royal, Lotte Betts-Dean, James Gilchrist, Julien Van Mellaerts, Ashley Riches, Simon Wallfisch, Louise Winter, and Elizabeth Llewellyn.

Concert 2: Songs by African American Women Composers - Friday 24th October, 7pm
Francesca Chiejina - soprano
Lea Shaw - mezzo-soprano
Nigel Foster - piano
Michaella Moore - speaker

This concert pays tribute to the wonderful heritage of African American women composers, and the struggles they have had to make their voices heard. Songs by Florence Price, Margaret Bonds, B E Boykin, Dorothy Rudd Moore, Jacqueline Hairston, Betty Jackson-King and Nkeiru Okoye, and by the Native American composer Martha Redbone, will be performed alongside readings of the words of women who played a part in the Civil Rights Movement. The voices of these women have, with the notable exception of Rosa Parks, been largely forgotten, and this programme, devised by LSF Director Nigel Foster, seeks to redress that balance. This concert is a plea for equality and for the rights of all human beings, whatever their skin-colour, to be respected and embraced.

Nigerian American soprano Francesca Chiejina is a graduate of the Jette Parker Young Artist programme at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden and winner of the 2023 UK Critics’ Circle Young Talent (Voice) Award. She has sung with the BBC Symphony and Royal Philharmonic Orchestras and the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal and leading roles with Scottish Opera, Grange Park Opera and ETO, and at the BBC Proms.
Lea Shaw was born in Denver, Colorado, and was an Emerging Artist for Scottish Opera 2021-22. She has sung at the St Magnus Festival and Edinburgh International Festival.
Nigel Foster has performed at Wigmore Hall, the South Bank Centre, Barbican Centre, Royal Opera House Covent Garden (Crush Bar) and across Europe as well as in North and South America, Japan, Malaysia and New Zealand, playing for singers including Roderick Williams, Dame Sarah Connolly, Nicky Spence, Nadine Benjamin, Kate Royal, Lotte Betts-Dean, James Gilchrist, Julien Van Mellaerts, Ashley Riches, Simon Wallfisch, Louise Winter, and Elizabeth Llewellyn.
Michaella Moore is from Delaware, USA and can currently be seen in Netflix Feature Bank of Dave 2. Upcoming work includes Netflix series Too Much by Lena Dunham.

Concert 3: Ethel Smyth and the Suffragettes - Friday 31st October, 7pm
Ella Taylor - soprano
Lotte Betts-Dean - mezzo-soprano
Nigel Foster - piano

Ethel Smyth was truly a pioneer, the first woman composer to have a work premiered at the Met in New York (and the only woman composer to be performed there until 2016) and the first female composer to receive a damehood. She also played a prominent role in the Suffragette movement, for which she was imprisoned in 1912, and she composed the March of the Women which became the Suffragette anthem. This programme, devised by Nigel Foster, uses Smyth’s own words from her Memoirs to explore the part she played in the Suffragette movement, campaigning for women’s’ right to vote, and to depict her same-sex relationships, her ‘Passions’, as she called them, which are illustrated by songs, all settings of poems written by women, by Amy Beach, Muriel Herbert, Samuel Barber, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Charles Ives, Liza Lehmann, Tania Leon, Frank Bridge, Elgar and others, and several songs by Ethel herself are also included in the mix.

Ella Taylor is a non-binary soprano. They were a Young Artist at the National Opera Studio and have since sung leading roles for the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, English National Opera, Dutch National Opera, Opera North, and at the Staatsoper Hamburg, with the Philharmonia and City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestras, and the London Sinfonietta, and at the Oxford International Song Festival and Leeds Lieder.
Lotte Betts-Dean is a regular favourite at LSF concerts. She won the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Young Artist Award 2024 and is a former Young Artist of the Oxford Lieder Festival (now Oxford International Song Festival). She has sung at the Aldeburgh Festival, Lewes Festival of Song, Wigmore Hall, leading roles for Opera Holland Park, the Grand Théâtre Genève, the Bayerische Staatsoper, and the Sydney Opera House.
Nigel Foster has performed at Wigmore Hall, the South Bank Centre, Barbican Centre, Royal Opera House Covent Garden (Crush Bar) and across Europe as well as in North and South America, Japan, Malaysia and New Zealand, playing for singers including Roderick Williams, Dame Sarah Connolly, Nicky Spence, Nadine Benjamin, Kate Royal, Lotte Betts-Dean, James Gilchrist, Julien Van Mellaerts, Ashley Riches, Simon Wallfisch, Louise Winter, and Elizabeth Llewellyn.

Concert 4: Women Immigrants to Britain - Friday 7th November, 7pm
Katy Thomson - soprano
Lily Mo Browne - mezzo-soprano
Nigel Foster - piano
Rekha John-Cheriyan - speaker

This concert is a tribute to the women who have come to this country as immigrants and refugees since 1945, and an acknowledgement of the huge contribution they have made and continue to make to British life. Some of their stories are told in their own words, read by Rekha John-Cheriyan, and these stories are illustrated by songs, all settings of poems written by women, by H Leslie Adams, Ernest Bloch, Elgar, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Libby Larsen, Lori Laitman, Wagner, Rachmaninov, Charles Ives, Jake Heggie, Lee Hoiby, Shirley Thompson and Raymond Yiu.

Katy Thomson was was a Britten Pears Young Artist (2021-2022), a Garsington Opera Alvarez Young Artist (2021 & 2022) and an Oxford Song Young Artist (2022-2023). She has sung roles with English National Opera, Scottish Opera.
Lily Mo Browne won the 2025 Kathleen Ferrier Award and is a 2025 Verbier Festival Young Artist. Her other competition successes include the Somerset Song Prize (both the main prize and the Audience Prize, and the AESS National English Song Competition.
Nigel Foster has performed at Wigmore Hall, the South Bank Centre, Barbican Centre, Royal Opera House Covent Garden (Crush Bar) and across Europe as well as in North and South America, Japan, Malaysia and New Zealand, playing for singers including Roderick Williams, Dame Sarah Connolly, Nicky Spence, Nadine Benjamin, Kate Royal, Lotte Betts-Dean, James Gilchrist, Julien Van Mellaerts, Ashley Riches, Simon Wallfisch, Louise Winter, and Elizabeth Llewellyn.
Rekha John-Cheriyan’s credits include Sheeba in Hollyoaks, Sabita in Casualty (BBC1), Maggie in the West End run and international tour of Soldier On and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Mrs Abbas in the feature film Polite Society.

Concert 5: The Life and Loves of Sara Teasdale - Friday 14th November, 7pm
Kristin Dauphinais - mezzo-soprano
Nigel Foster - piano

A recital exploring the life and loves of the American poet Sara Teasdale, illustrated with songs setting her poetry by Amy Beach, John Duke, Richard Pearson Thomas, George Crumb, Lori Laitman, Simon Sargon, Martha Helen Schmidt and others, and a world premiere by Zachary James Bramble. Kristin Dauphinais is travelling to London from Tucson Arizona specially for this concert, which is a repeat of a programme Kristin and Nigel performed to great acclaim as part of the Desert Song Festival in Arizona in January this year.

Kristin Dauphinais has sung in Germany, Austria, Luxembourg, Italy, Spain, China and Australia as well as across her native America. She sang the role of Ottone in the American professional première of Vivaldi’s Ottone in Villa for the 2007 Arizona Vivaldi Festival. She has sung in Carneggie Hall (Weill Recital Hall), the Opera Festival San Luis Potosì in Mexico and the Saarburger Serenaden, International Chamber Music Festival in Saarburg, Germany.
Nigel Foster has performed at Wigmore Hall, the South Bank Centre, Barbican Centre, Royal Opera House Covent Garden (Crush Bar) and across Europe as well as in North and South America, Japan, Malaysia and New Zealand, playing for singers including Roderick Williams, Dame Sarah Connolly, Nicky Spence, Nadine Benjamin, Kate Royal, Lotte Betts-Dean, James Gilchrist, Julien Van Mellaerts, Ashley Riches, Simon Wallfisch, Louise Winter, and Elizabeth Llewellyn.

Concert 6: Songs by Latin American Women Composers - Friday 21st November, 7pm
Ana Beard Fernandez - soprano
Michel de Souza - baritone
Nigel Foster - piano

In collaboration with the Iberian and Latin American Music Society (ILAMS), the Instituto Cervantes and the Echoes Festival, this concert incorporates songs ranging in date from the 19th to 21st centuries, by composers from Mexico, Argentina, Venezuela, Brazil and Cuba, including all-time favourites such as Besame Mucho, Júrame, and Hasta la vista and more rarely-heard gems of Song. Covering subjects as diverse as food and drink, love and passion, temptation, life and death, the music will be interpreted by dancers, bringing a taste of the vitality, joy and passion of Latin America to an autumnal London evening.

British-Spanish soprano Ana Beard Fernandez has sung at Wigmore Hall, the Royal Opera House Coven Garden (Linbury Theatre), Longborough Festival Opera and Opéra de Lille. She has given concerts in Stockholm, Berlin, Stuttgart and Freiburg and at the Festival de la Gente in France.
Brazilian baritone Michel de Souza won the Maria Callas Vocal Competition in São Paulo and was a Jette Parker Young Artist at the Royal Opera House Covent Garde, He has sung with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra at the Proms, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the L’Orchestre National de Lyon.
Nigel Foster has performed at Wigmore Hall, the South Bank Centre, Barbican Centre, Royal Opera House Covent Garden (Crush Bar) and across Europe as well as in North and South America, Japan, Malaysia and New Zealand, playing for singers including Roderick Williams, Dame Sarah Connolly, Nicky Spence, Nadine Benjamin, Kate Royal, Lotte Betts-Dean, James Gilchrist, Julien Van Mellaerts, Ashley Riches, Simon Wallfisch, Louise Winter, and Elizabeth Llewellyn.

Concert 7:  Women Writers of the Screen and Stage - Friday 28th November , 7pm
Georgina Cohu - mezzo-soprano
Hector Bloggs - baritone
Nigel Foster - piano

A concert celebrating women composers and lyricists who have written for films and for stage shows. The programme includes songs from films .ranging in date from the 1930s to the present, including Swing Time, Fifty Shades of Grey, Sweet Charity, A Star is Born, Nine to Five, The Bodyguard, The Last Dragon, The Thomas Crown Affair, Frozen and Coco, and stage shows including Irma la Douce, On the Town, and Wonderful Town.

Georgina Cohu is currently studying at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. She has performed in all over the UK and in France.
Hector Bloggs is also studying at the Guildhall. He is a Samling Artist and winner of the Association of English Singers and Speakers Courtney Kenny Award.
Nigel Foster has performed at Wigmore Hall, the South Bank Centre, Barbican Centre, Royal Opera House Covent Garden (Crush Bar) and across Europe as well as in North and South America, Japan, Malaysia and New Zealand, playing for singers including Roderick Williams, Dame Sarah Connolly, Nicky Spence, Nadine Benjamin, Kate Royal, Lotte Betts-Dean, James Gilchrist, Julien Van Mellaerts, Ashley Riches, Simon Wallfisch, Louise Winter, and Elizabeth Llewellyn.

Concert 8: The Life and Loves of Christina Rossetti - Friday 5th December, 7pm
Susan Bullock - soprano
Nigel Foster - piano
Janine Roebuck - speaker

A tribute to the English poet Christina Rossetti, on her 195th birthday. This programme, devised by Nigel Foster, includes settings of Christina Rossetti’s poetry by well-loved composers of English Song, including Vaughan Williams, Parry and Michael Head, plus settings by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Arthur Somervell, Frederick Cowen, Juliana Hall, Charles Wood, Thomas Dunhill, Liza Lehmann and others. The programme also includes a song by J Scott Irvine, written for Susan Bullock. These songs will be combined with readings from Christina Rossetti’s letters and other sources to give a very human portrait of this fascinating character.

Susan Bullock’s career began with winning the Kathleen Ferrier Award, and has since sung in all the major opera houses of the world: La Scala, the Met, Covent Garden, Berlin Staatsoper, Teatro Colón Buenos Aires, Sydney Opera House, singing roles such as Brunnhilde, Klytämnestra (Elektra) and Salome, and she is equally at home on the recital platform. She was the soprano soloist at the Last Night of the Proms in 2011, and, as Britannia, she sang Always look on the bright side of life with Eric Idle during the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics in London.
Nigel Foster has performed at Wigmore Hall, the South Bank Centre, Barbican Centre, Royal Opera House Covent Garden (Crush Bar) and across Europe as well as in North and South America, Japan, Malaysia and New Zealand, playing for singers including Roderick Williams, Dame Sarah Connolly, Nicky Spence, Nadine Benjamin, Kate Royal, Lotte Betts-Dean, James Gilchrist, Julien Van Mellaerts, Ashley Riches, Simon Wallfisch, Louise Winter, and Elizabeth Llewellyn.

Concert 9: Marie-Blanche Vasnier, muse of Claude Debussy - Saturday 6th December, 7pm
Eyra Norman - soprano
Abhisri Chaudhuri - piano

The winners of the 2024 London Song Festival Schubert Song Prize present a complete performance of the Vasnier Songbook; songs that Debussy wrote for Marie-Blanche Vasnier, a high soprano with striking green eyes, with whom he enjoyed an affair from 1880 to around 1887. Debussy was 18 when he met Marie-Blanche, who was 32 and married, and he wrote some of his most exuberant songs for her. This is a rare performance of all 27 songs that Debussy wrote for Marie-Blanche.

Eyra Norman is a Shipston Rising Star and an Opera Prelude Young Artist. She made her debut in 2019 as Belinda in Dido and Aeneas with English National Opera and has since performed as a soloist at venues including the Royal Opera House, Royal Festival Hall, Wigmore Hall, and Royal Albert Hall, and in Italy, Hong Kong and America.
Abhisri Chaudhuri is a 2024 Leeds Lieder Young Artist, winner of the pianist prize of the Somerset Song Prize, and has performed at the Wigmore Hall and in France and Italy.

Concert 10: Cross-Channel Currents - Friday 12th December, 7pm
Kitty Whately - mezzo-soprano
Nigel Foster - piano

The final concert of the 2025 London Song Festival presents an over-view of English and French song, written by women composers or setting poems written by women. The composers and poets include Rebecca Clarke, Madeleine Dring and Ursula Vaughan Williams from this side of the Channel, and Marguerite Canal, Armande de Polignac and Rita Strohl from France. A feast of rarely-heard vocal gems from composers and poets who would be far better known had they been men.

Kitty Whately is a Kathleen Ferrier Award winner and BBC New Generation Artist. She made her Royal Opera House debut as Michelle in the world premiere of Mark Anthony Turner’s opera Festen. She has sung leading roles with English Touring Opera, Scottish Opera, Opera National de Lorraine, at the Edinburgh International, Aix-en-Provence and Verbier Festivals, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, at the Barbican and Wigmore Halls, and in Antwerp, Strasbourg, Luxembourg, Bruges and Lisbon among other places.
Nigel Foster has performed at Wigmore Hall, the South Bank Centre, Barbican Centre, Royal Opera House Covent Garden (Crush Bar) and across Europe as well as in North and South America, Japan, Malaysia and New Zealand, playing for singers including Roderick Williams, Dame Sarah Connolly, Nicky Spence, Nadine Benjamin, Kate Royal, Lotte Betts-Dean, James Gilchrist, Julien Van Mellaerts, Ashley Riches, Simon Wallfisch, Louise Winter, and Elizabeth Llewellyn.

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