Jury and keynote speakers
2019
Liz Garnett is a musicologist, choral clinician and close-harmony arranger whose research and praxis both explore the theme of music and its social meanings. She studied music at the Universities of Bristol and Southampton, then taught at Colchester Institute’s School of Music and Performance Arts for four years, before moving to Birmingham Conservatoire, where she served as Head of Postgraduate Studies until June 2009. She is the author of The British Barbershopper: A Study in Socio-Musical Values (Ashgate, 2005) and Choral Conducting and the Construction of Meaning: Gesture, Voice, Identity (Ashgate, 2009) and is in demand internationally as a performance coach and close-harmony arranger.
The research process for her second major book involved visits to more than 40 choirs in rehearsal, and these observations provided not only material for the book, but also a deep understanding of the conductor-choir dynamic in a wide variety of contexts and styles. This experience continues to nourish her work as a choral clinician, giving rich and varied insights into the problems that conductors and choirs face, and the relative success of different approaches to solving them.
Liz Garnett is one of the UK’s most prominent arrangers and performance coaches, having coached and/or arranged for many of the UK's top choruses and quartets, and arranged for groups from the UK, Ireland, the USA, Canada, Germany and Holland. She served as a Music Category judge from 2000-2013, and as LABBS Music Category Director from 2006-2009. She has adjudicated in both barbershop and ‘mainstream’ choral classes at the Llangollen International Eisteddfod and the Sligo International Choral Festival, and for 10 years directed and arranged for a close-harmony choir called Magenta. In January 2018 she became Musical Director of the Telfordaires male barbershop chorus.
Ēriks Ešenvalds is one of the most sought-after composers working today, with a busy commission schedule and performances of his music heard on every continent. After study at the Latvian Baptist Theological Seminary and the Latvian Academy of Music, he was a member of the State Choir Latvija. In 2011 he was awarded the two-year position of Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts at Trinity College, University of Cambridge. Ēriks has won multiple awards for his work and undertakes many international residencies working on his music and lecturing.
Recent premieres include Lakes Awake at Dawn for the Boston Symphony and City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Whispers on the Prairie Wind for the Utah Symphony and Salt Lake Vocal Artists, St Luke Passion for the Latvian Radio Choir and Sinfonietta Riga, and the major multimedia symphony Nordic Light in the US, Canada, and Germany. His full-scale opera The Immured was premiered at the Latvian National Opera in 2016 to great acclaim. His writing continues with commissions from the Gewandhaus Leipzig and Grant Park Music Festival Chicago. 2018 sees the premiere of his next multimedia symphony based on volcanoes.
His compositions appear on recordings from Trinity College Choir, Cambridge on Hyperion, Portland State Chamber Choir on Naxos, Latvian Radio Choir and Sinfonietta Riga on Ondine, ORA on Harmonia Mundi, and VOCES8 on Decca Classics, amongst others.
Vasco Negreiros was born in Portugal and moved to Brazil at the age of ten, where he commenced his musical studies with piano lessons. He later studied viola and singing, initially specialising in choral conducting.
In Germany, he completed the conducting course at the Musikhochschule Karlsruhe, followed by postgraduate studies in conducting at the Musikhochscule of Mannheim-Heidelberg. In 2005, he completed his PhD, focusing on various motets by Frei Manuel Cardoso under the supervision of Owen Rees (Oxford), which resulted in the ‘Livro de vários motetes’ by Frei Manuel Cardoso being published in facsimile by Casa da Moeda – National Portuguese Publishing.
As a conductor, Vasco regularly directs the Vocal Ensemble, and guest conducts various orchestras, in Portugal and abroad, particularly programmes of early music or of his own compositions. His first album was launched in 1989, the CD ‘Brasil Barroco’, which featured first modern performances of colonial music. He has been teaching at the Curso Internacional de Música Antiqua at Daroca (Spain) since 1998.
Vasco released a triple CD featuring the entire ‘Livro de vários motetes’ of Frei Manuel Cardoso, under the Althum label. The results of his research about Jerónimo Francisco de Lima, ‘Rabbia, Furor, Dispetto’, under the Paraty label, Paris, was received to international critical acclaim. A recording of his composition for children, ‘O Gato das Botas’, a pedagogical orchestral work, has been launched as a CD by the mPmP (Movimento Patrimonial pela Música Portuguesa).
Vasco Negreiros teaches conducting and other curricular areas relating to practice, theory and aural awareness at the University of Aveiro. He has extensive experience as a music editor, particularly in the field of early music. His has presented his research at various conferences and is the author of various books and articles in the area of musicology.
Apart from his conducting career, Vasco remains active as a composer, winning an award in Bulgaria for his Amen for children’s choir, and invited to the Ketewan Festival, India in 2017 as the Composer in Residence. In 2019, he was the guest composer for the Festival Estorial Lisboa, for which he wrote the work ‘Peregrinações – sobre o livro de Fernão Mendes Pinto’. Vasco conducted the world premiere of this work at the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos, performed by the actor Luís Miguel Cintra and the Orquestra Metropolitana de Lisboa.
JURY 2018
Patrick K. Freer is Professor of Music at Georgia State University (USA) and former Visiting Professor at the Universität Mozarteum Salzburg (Austria). His degrees are from Westminster Choir College and Teachers College-Columbia University. Dr. Freer has conducted or presented in 39 of the United States and 28 countries, including recent guest conducting for the Bogotá Philharmonic Orchestra (Colombia) and Voces LGTB de Madrid (Spain). Dr. Freer is Editor of the International Journal of Research in Choral Singing, Past Editor of Music Educators Journal, and a member of the National Standing Committee for Research & Publications (American Choral Directors Association). Dr. Freer has authored 3 textbooks, a DVD series for teachers, an extensive internet video series for middle school singers, 17 book chapters/sections, and over 120 articles in most of the field’s leading national and international journals.
JURY 2018
Borbála Szirányi graduated in music education and choral conducting at the Liszt Academy of Music in 1997. In her final academic year she participated in Prof. Peter Erdei’s conducting master course in Oxford.
From 1996 to 2015 she worked at the music school of the Hungarian State Opera House’s children’s choir as classroom music teacher and choir conductor.
In 1999 she conducted demonstration lessons for the Kodály Institute.
From 2000 she has regularly taught as a visiting professor at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing where the Kodály programme was launched by her direction. The Conservatory’s female choir and mixed choir were founded under her guidance. They performed several concerts with both Western European and Chinese programme, worked together with the Chinese conductor Muhai Tang and published a CD.
In 2000 she was a visiting professor in the Kodály programme at the Holy Names College in Oakland, California.
She conducted Kodály courses at Shanghai (2001), Canton, (2005, 2006), Dublin (2013, 2014), Singapore (2013, 2014) Wales (2015, 2016), Bucharest (2016), Buenos Aires (2017) and Telford (2017).
In 2010, she conducted a choir-workshop for the Hong Kong Treble Choir and in 2016, she taught at the 37th International Choral Conducting Summer School, in Limerick.
From 2010 she is teacher of the Kodály Institute of the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music. She regularly conducts post-graduate courses for Hungarian music teachers. From 2014 she teaches at the Kós Károly Általános Iskola that is part of the Mintaiskola project led by the Liszt Academy of Music. In this project she and her colleagues experiment new music methodological techniques based on the Kodály concept in order to refresh and renew the Hungarian music pedagogy, making it more adaptable to the 21st centuries classroom.
Born in Lisbon, Gonçalo Lourenço holds a Bachelor degree in Composition from the Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa, under the tutelage of Christopher Bochmann; a Masters degree in Choral Conducting from the College Conservatory of Music, Cincinnati, studying under Brad Scott, Elmer Thomas and Earl Rivers, and a Doctorate in Choral Conducting from the University of Indiana, where he worked with Robert Porco, Carmen Téliez, William Gray and Sven-David Sandstrom.
For his minor in Orchestral Conducting, Gonçalo worked with Mark Gibson at the University of Cincinnati, conducting Tchaikovsky’s 4th Symphony and Piano Concerto No. 23 by Mozart. At the University of Indiana, he worked with David Effron and Arthur Fagan, conducting Beethoven’s 1st Symphony, Sibelius’ 2nd Symphony, the 4th Symphony by Schubert and Mozart’s 5th Violin Concerto.
As a composer, his pieces have been premiered in various countries, including the piece ‘Ça Va’ with the Young Musicians’ Orchestra of Iceland and commissioned by their conductor Gunnsteinn Olafsson; the ‘4 Motetos de Natal’, premiered by J.D. Goddard and the Mastersinger Choir of Ohio; ‘Alma Mater’, premiered by the L’Ensemble Portique in the USA and the work ‘Hodie Christus Natus Est’, performed by the Cincinnati Camerata under the direction of Chris Miller. In 2011, Daniel Paulsen premiered ‘Desabafo’ for choir and guitar quartet in Sacramento, USA. Gonçalo was the European representative at the event ‘I’m Pulse’ in the Philippines, with his piece ‘Ícore’ performed in Manila. The oratorio ‘From the Ashes’, for orchestra, choir, soloists and narrator was premiered in Bloomington as part of his doctoral thesis at the University of Indiana. In Portugal, his music is performed by various choirs including Coro Ricercare, Coro Odyssea and Coro Anonymus.
As a choral conductor, Gonçalo has directed the Cincinnati Camerata, NOTUS and VocalEssence in the United States. He was responsible for choir at the Conservatory of Covilhã, Portugal, and founded the Coro Odyssea, which premiered over 30 new works by composers such as Christopher Bochmann, Dennis Bathory-Kitsz, Marcus Tristan, Fernando Lapa, Sérgio Peixoto, Bem Ofer Arnots, Domenico Ricci and Jiyoung Kim. He was assistant conductor of the choir Aguava, under Carmen Téliez, preparing the choir and orchestra for a performance of James MacMillan’s ‘Seven Last Words’. In 2012, he founded the baroque instrumental ensemble Exordium, directing the ensemble in performances of Bach’s Brandenberg Concerto No. 5 and the Concerto for 2 Violins.
Gonçalo is currently the mentor of the Estúdio de Direcção Coral, Studio Conducere and conducts choir at ESART.
Vasco Negreiros was born in Portugal and moved to Brazil at the age of ten, where he commenced his musical studies with piano lessons. He later studied viola and singing, initially specialising in choral conducting.
In Germany, he completed the conducting course at the Musikhochschule Karlsruhe, followed by post-graduate studies in conducting at the Musikhochscule of Mannheim-Heidelberg. In 2005, he completed his PhD, focusing on various motets by Frei Manuel Cardoso under the supervision of Owen Rees (Oxford), which resulted in the ‘Livro de vários motetes’ by Frei Manuel Cardoso being published in facsimile by Casa da Moeda – National Portuguese Publishing.
As a conductor, Vasco regularly directs the Vocal Ensemble, and guest conducts various orchestras, in Portugal and abroad, particularly programmes of early music or of his own compositions. His first album was launched in 1989, the CD ‘Brasil Barroco’, which featured first modern performances of colonial music. He has been teaching at the Curso Internacional de Música Antiqua at Daroca (Spain) since 1998, in addition to giving masterclasses and guest lectures.
Vasco released a triple CD featuring the entire ‘Livro de vários motetes’ of Frei Manuel Cardoso, under the Althum label. The results of his research about Jerónimo Francisco de Lima, ‘Rabbia, Furor, Dispetto’, under the Paraty label, Paris, was received to international critical acclaim.
In recent years, apart from his conducting career, he has been active as a composer, particularly of music for children. Apart from children’s repertoire, he has written for chamber groups, with his harp works published by the Parisian editor Harosphère, while his other works are mostly represented by AvA Musical Editions.
Vasco’s current research interests focus on music from the Indian subcontinent.