RWCMD Appoint New Jane Hodge International Chairs in Music & Drama

24 February 2015

Matthew Rhys, Carlo Rizzi, Martin Constantine, Pamela Howard and Simon Stephens are joining the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama as new Jane Hodge International Chairs in Music and Drama. Their appointments bring them within a group that already includes Michael Sheen, Simon Keenlyside, John Fisher, Paul Watkins and Daniel Phillips.

This new investment, which allows students to work closely with leading international artists and to continue to benefit from their knowledge, insight and artistry, will further develop the profound impact made by the Chairs on both the experience of the students and the national and international profile of the College.

Hilary Boulding, Principal of the Royal Welsh College, said “We are enormously grateful to the Jane Hodge Foundation for their generosity which has enabled us to appoint exceptional artists from across the world as mentors for the new generation of performers, designers and technicians training here.”

The Jane Hodge International Chairs at the Royal Welsh College are:

Pamela Howard, International Chair in Drama
Matthew Rhys, International Chair in Drama
Michael Sheen, International Chair in Drama
Simon Stephens, International Chair in Drama
Martin Constantine, International Chair in Directing
John Fisher, International Chair in Opera
Simon Keenlyside, International Chair in Voice
Daniel Phillips, International Chair in Violin
Carlo Rizzi, International Chair in Conducting
Paul Watkins, International Chair in Cello

Internationally acclaimed actor Matthew Rhys said, “To be asked by the College to travel home and impart what my travels have taught me is an enormous honour. Having been to the College recently  to accept my Fellowship, I’m looking forward to coming back to Wales and working with the students.”

Fellow actor Michael Sheen, comments, “I was delighted to be one of the first International Chairs in Drama at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama and have enjoyed working with the new generation of acting and production talent, training at the College. I feel sure that this exciting initiative, where the current generation of Welsh actors pass on their knowledge and experience to inspire the next, will enable us to further secure the legacy of acting in Wales.”

“The College is one of the most thorough and searching actor training courses in Europe,” adds playwright Simon Stephens. “There is an astonishing level of new talent coming through Wales right now and to be part of stimulating, provoking and challenging that talent will be inspiring. I will learn far more than I will teach.”

 

Stage designer Professor Pamela Howard, who has just given her first masterclass to RWCMD design students, agrees, “I have been following the development of the course over several years, and am happy to see that it’s without doubt the leader in its field. Its innovative approach to the subject provides unique opportunities for students entering the theatre profession, and its vision of multi-disciplinary education in the Arts, without compromise to the subject, has earned world respect.”

In November, Maestro Carlo Rizzi conducted the Royal Welsh College’s acclaimed production of Britten’s War Requiem at St David’s Hall, which also featured fellow Chair Simon Keenlyside, and said “I am very pleased that I can extend my commitment as a Jane Hodge International Chair to share my experience with the College’s dedicated young musicians over the next three years. I know that I will find it very rewarding to work with their talent, enthusiasm and energy and I look forward to it very much.”

“As the International Chair in Cello, I have the chance to come in and work intensively with the students over a sustained period,” says Paul Watkins. “This post is so rewarding and meaningful to me because each time I come back, I can see how they’ve grown and matured as musicians.”

Director of Music, Dr John Cranmer adds. “Combined with our world-class facilities, this third appointment of our Jane Hodge International Chairs reflects some of the key specialist areas of the College’s development, notably string playing and opera performance. Our team of Jane Hodge International Chairs are inspirational artists who have each made a distinctive contribution to their field and are committed to supporting new generations of performers. We look forward to developing close relationships with these exceptional artists over the coming two years.”

“The drama department is delighted that these posts have been created and that we have been able to appoint such inspirational and prestigious artists from the world of performing arts,” agrees Sean Crowley, Director of Drama. “The Jane Hodge International Chairs in Drama will both inspire and further enhance our students’ ability to train, perform, and fulfil their potential in their chosen profession, reflecting the College’s commitment to drama training within Wales.”

 

Editors’ Notes

The Jane Hodge Foundation
The Jane Hodge Foundation is a grant making charity, established in 1962 by the late Sir Julian Hodge in memory of his mother. Sir Julian had a long career in banking and finance and set up many businesses in Wales including Julian Hodge Bank Limited, which is based in Cardiff. The Jane Hodge Foundation support a wide range of charities involved in health, education and religion, both locally, in South Wales, and across the UK.

 

The Jane Hodge International Chairs:

Pamela Howard: International Chair in Drama
Pamela Howard has worked as a Stage Designer in the UK, Europe and USA since 1960, and has realised over 250 productions. She has worked at all the major national and regional theatres, including the creation of several large scale site-specific works in Glasgow with the late John McGrath.

Since 2000 she has been developing her work as Director/Scenographer specialising in contemporary opera and music theatre, with a particular interest in site specific and sustainable theatre. She is currently working on Charlotte a new music/theatre original creation with Alon Nashman (Libretto/performer) and Ales Brezina (Composer) for Canadian Stage Company, Toronto.

 

Matthew Rhys: International Chair in Drama
Matthew Rhys was born and grew up in Cardiff and after winning a Bafta Cymru best actor award for his role in the film Bydd yn Wrol has enjoyed a successful career both in Wales and across the UK.

Film and TV roles saw him playing alongside Anthony Hopkins, Jonathan Pryce and Rachel Griffiths. In theatre he took the leading role of Benjamin in the West End adaption of The Graduate with Kathleen Turner playing Mrs Robinson.  In 2005 he made a film about his journey across the plains of Patagonia, recording in film and photography the journey of the band of Welshmen who had arrived there 120 years before to establish a Welsh speaking enclave. He has subsequently created a film production company named Patagonia.

Matthew is now based in LA where he has had a hugely successful television career. His most renowned role was as the lawyer Kevin Walker in the 5 season run of ABC’s Brothers & Sisters and he has recently been seen on television both in the US and the UK as a KGB sleeper agent in The Americans. He has returned to work in the UK with his most recent roles including the lead in The Mystery of Edwin Drood, and The Scapegoat on British TV, and as Mr Darcy in the murder mystery based on Pride and Prejudice, Death Comes to Pemberley.

 

Michael Sheen: International Chair in Drama
Michael made his professional debut in 1991, starring opposite Vanessa Redgrave in When She Danced at the Globe Theatre, and made notable stage appearances in Romeo and Juliet (1992), Don’t Fool With Love (1993) and Peer Gynt (1994). Sheen has become better known as a screen actor since the 2000s, in particular through his roles in various biopics, starring in a trilogy of films as British politician Tony Blair: The Deal in 2003, followed by The Queen (2006) and The Special Relationship (2010), for which he was nominated for both a BAFTA Award and an Emmy. Sheen was also nominated for a BAFTA for his role as Kenneth Williams in BBC Four’s  Fantabulosa!, and won an Olivier Award in 2006 for portraying the broadcaster David Frost in Frost/Nixon, a role he revisited in the 2008 film adaptation of the play. He has also starred as the outspoken football manager Brian Clough in The Damned United as well as many other film roles including The Twilight Saga: New Moon and Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris.

Michael Sheen returned home to Port Talbot in 2011 to create and star in National Theatre Wales’s The Passion, a 72-hour secular passion play staged in and around his home town. From late 2011 until early 2012, he played the title role in Hamlet at the Young Vic. In 2013, he received a Golden Globe nomination for his role in Showtime’s television drama Masters of Sex. Michael Sheen was awarded an OBE in 2009 in recognition of his services to Drama.

 

Simon Stephens: International Chair in Drama
Multi award-winning playwright Simon Stephens is an Artist Associate at the Lyric, Hammersmith and the inaugural associate Playwright of Steep Theatre Company, Chicago, where two of his plays, Harper Regan and Motortown had their US premieres.

He has taught on the Young Writers’ Programme at the Royal Court Theatre for many years and his writing, characterised as part of the in-yer-face generation, includes the recent adaptation of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which won him his second Olivier for Best New Play in 2013.

 

Martin Constantine: International Chair in Directing
Award winning theatre and opera director Martin Constantine has directed for such companies as the Royal Opera House, Royal Shakespeare Company, English National Opera, Welsh National Youth Opera, Almeida, Bristol Old Vic, National Theatre Studio, Chichester Festival Theatre, and Grange Park Opera. His recent production of Paul Bunyan for Welsh National Opera won the RPS Award and was nominated for a South Bank Sky Arts Award. He is co-artistic director of liveartshow, a company making new work with music who recently won the MTN Award for The Future for Beginners at the Edinburgh Festival, and their productions were the centrepiece of the Peter Brook Empty Space Award winning season at The Yard Theatre, London. Martin established and is Director of ENO Opera Works – an innovative training course for young opera singers at English National Opera. He has directed several recent operas at RWCMD including The Magic Flute and Cosi Fan Tutte.

 

John Fisher: International Chair in Opera
John Fisher studied at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and The London Opera Centre, now known as the National Opera Studio. His operatic career, which began as Music Director of the company’s ‘Opera For All’ project, has included Théâtre à la Monnaie, Brussels, Nederlands Opera, Amsterdam, and he was the first non-Italian to be appointed  Artistic Director in a state-funded Italian opera house when he joined the Teatro alla Fenice. He was Director of Opera and Vocal Productions and Executive Producer at Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft, Hamburg, and Director of Music Administration at the Metropolitan Opera, New York before taking up the post of General Director of Welsh National Opera in May 2006.

John has collaborated most closely throughout his career with Abbado, Carlos Kleiber, George Solti and James Levine. Aside from the great conductors, John has worked extensively with most of the world’s opera stars, notably Luciano Pavarotti, Jose Carreras and Joan Sutherland. He has just completed a season at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, working on their Ring Cycle.

John’s work in New York also regularly involves the Young Artists programme at the Met and at the Juilliard School, and he is a regular visiting artist at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama working with the singers on the Opera Performance Course.

 

Simon Keenlyside: International Chair in Voice
Baritone Simon Keenlyside has performed at virtually all the world’s major opera houses. Between 1989 to 1994, he featured as an artist for Scottish Opera and during this period he also made debut performances at the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, English National Opera, Welsh National Opera, San Francisco Opera, and in Geneva, Paris, and Sydney. He sang for Glyndebourne for the first time in 1993 and made his debut at the  Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1996. More recently, he appeared in the world premieres of two 21st-century operas, creating the roles of Prospero in Thomas Adès’ The Tempest (2004), and Winston Smith in Lorin Maazel’s 1984 (2005).

Simon is also a prodigious recording artist and has featured on issues for Hyperion Records, including music of Benjamin Britten, Emmanuel Chabrier, Maurice Duruflé and Henry Purcell. He recently participated in the EMI Classics world premiere recording of The Tempest.

 

Daniel Phillips: International Chair in Violin
Daniel Phillips began playing the violin at the age of four under the tutelage of his father, composer and former violinist of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Eugene Phillips.

Now an established chamber musician, solo artist and teacher of international stature, he is a founding member of the Orion String Quartet, the resident quartet of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Centre in New York City, and a member of the renowned Bach Aria Group. Daniel is Professor of Violin at the Aaron Copland School of Music of Queens College, and on the faculties of the Mannes College of Music and the Bard Conservatory.

Daniel has performed as soloist with many of America’s leading symphony orchestras and has also served on the summer faculties of the Banff Centre, Heifetz Institute, the Colorado College Music Festival and in the UK at Prussia Cove. Recently he shared the solo spotlight in a performance of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons in Santa Fe with violinists Benny Kim, Bella Hristova, and William Pruecil.

 

Carlo Rizzi: International Chair in Conducting
Carlo Rizzi ranks among today’s leading conductors. Equally at home in opera and the concert hall, his vast repertoire spans everything from the central works of the operatic and symphonic canon to rarities by Bellini, Cimarosa and Donizetti. He is in high demand as a guest artist at the world’s most prestigious venues and festivals, not least for the insight and integrity of his musicianship and the visceral energy and psychological depths of his interpretations. Opera is imprinted in Maestro Rizzi’s musical DNA. He discovered the art-form during his formative years in Milan, attending productions at the Teatro alla Scala and, following his graduation from the city’s famous Conservatory, contributing to their development as a repetiteur with the company. Since launching his conducting career in 1982 with Donizetti’s L’ajo nell’imbarazzo, he has performed almost one hundred operas.

The Rizzi repertoire list, rich in Italian works but also well stocked with the music of Wagner, Richard Strauss, Britten and Janáček, reflects the genuine breadth of his interests and the questing nature of his curiosity. Two fruitful periods as Music Director of Welsh National Opera (1992-2001; 2004-08) and frequent guest conducting engagements at the Metropolitan Opera and the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden belong to the great bedrock of experience supporting Carlo Rizzi’s work. His artistic development has also drawn from the critically acclaimed success of concert performances with distinguished orchestras around the world and most recently completed a cycle of Tchaikovsky’s symphonies with the Orchestre du Théâtre Royal de La Monnaie as well as concerts with Filarmonica della Scala, Orchestra di Santa Cecilia, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and Hong Kong Philharmonic.

 

Paul Watkins: International Chair in Cello
Teacher, cellist, conductor and recording artist, Paul Watkins was the winner of the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition at 18. Within two years he was appointed principal cellist of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and is now one of Britain’s foremost concert cellists.

A most versatile musician, after winning both the first prize and audience prize at the Leeds Conductors’ Competition Paul has made guest appearances as conductor with most of the London orchestras and many others throughout the world. In 2009 he was appointed Music Director of the English Chamber Orchestra and Principal Guest Conductor of the Ulster Orchestra, and he made his opera conducting debut with Opera North in 2006. Paul has a strong interest in chamber music, notably as a long-standing member of the distinguished Nash Ensemble and since 2013 following his appointment as cellist with the world-renowned Emerson String Quartet.