Glyndebourne Youth Opera 4 meets eight Thursday evenings in the Autumn and Spring terms with occasional weekend rehearsals in preparation for performance. Collaborations include work with the South Downs Youth Orchestra and tours to Ireland, Germany, Scotland, Barcelona and the Netherlands. In autumn 2007, Glyndebourne Youth Opera 4 performed at the Yo! International Youth Opera Festival in Utrecht with their piece Wild Dreams written in collaboration with Glyndebourne’s composer in residence Julian Philips.
Directors of Glyndebourne Youth Opera 4
Clare Whistler Artistic Director
Clare Whistler was trained and performed as a professional dancer and choreographer for 20 years mainly in North America. She has worked for Glyndebourne since 1996 both in education and on the main stage and currently directs Glyndebourne Youth Opera. Clare has also worked for the education departments at the Royal Opera House, ENO Baylis, Opera North and Creative Partnerships East London. She has been involved in many arts projects with people of all ages, abilities, situations and places including the Imperial War Museum, Handel House, an abandoned bus shelter in Wick, the British Museum and Wormwood Scrubs. During 2005 Clare directed On Spitalfields, a community piece for 200 composed by Jonathan Dove, a piece for 400 children and orchestra for the opening of the Rem Koolhus Casa Da Music in Portugal, as well as touring the Glyndebourne Youth Opera to YO, the International Youth Opera Festival in Utrecht, Holland. In 2006 Clare directed School 4 Lovers, Glyndebourne and Finnish National Opera’s Hip Hop adaptation of Mozart’s Cosi fan Tutte.
Jonathan Gill Music Director
Jonathan Gill studied composition with William Mathias and conducting with James Lockhart at the University of Wales and the Royal College of Music. Recent credits as Music Director include: FOLLIES (Royal and Derngate, Northampton), Carl Davis’s Alice in Wonderland (Birmingham Rep and West Yorkshire Playhouse), Falstaff (MTL at the Drill Hall), The Jonah Boy (Stephen Joseph, Scarborough), Peribanez and Sleeping Beauty (Young Vic), and Putting it Together and Company (Library Theatre, Manchester). Jonathan arranged and conducted School4Lovers, a hip hop version of Cosi fan Tutte (Glyndebourne, Finnish National Opera and Estonian National Opera), and was musical arranger for adaptations of Le Nozze di Figaro, Carmen and Die Fledermaus (New Vic, Stoke).
In London Jonathan has conducted performances of Oklahoma (National Theatre at the Lyceum), Matthew Bourne’s The Carman (Old Vic) and The Dreaming by Howard Goodall and Charles Hart (Linbury, ROH). His operatic repertoire includes Le Nozze di Figaro, Cosi Fan Tutte, L'elisir d'amour, Macbeth, Aida, La Boheme and Carmen which he conducted for companies including English Touring Opera, Opera Holland Park and Central Festival Opera.
Jonathan has also given premieres of pieces by Richard Taylor, Jonathan Dove, Phillip Cassian, Ian McQueen and Mathew King’s On London Fields, which won a Royal Philharmonic Society Award in 2005. He is currently composing an opera with writer Stephen Plaice for the operagenesis programme at the ROH.
For further information on any aspect of Glyndebourne Youth Opera please contact:
Amy Bere Education Projects Manager
Sarah Cant Education Assistant
Glyndebourne Education
Glyndebourne
Lewes
East Sussex
BN8 5UU
Direct Line / Fax: 01273 815023
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Youth Opera 1
Youth Opera 2
Youth Opera 3
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