2008

The Song of Rhiannon

Helen Cooper

2007

SHADOWTRACKS

Christina Jones

After completing a degree in Theatre Arts at Rose Bruford College of Speech and Drama Jane Aspeling I worked with several fringe and community theatre groups in London. She moved to Ewelme, a little village in Oxfordshire, where she brought up her children. During this time Jane met Guy Dagul and they collaborated on various musical projects for children including writing a new version of Toad of Toad Hall and Jolly Roger based on the book by Colin McNaughton. She took up painting, did a Foundation Art course and got a place at Central St Martins to study a Fine Art Degree. Jane thus moved back up to London. In 2003/2004 she worked with Guy devising the libretto for ‘Game Over’. Having hooked up again with several friends from college days Jane is in the process of developing a couple of projects with them. These will have to be put on the back burner when she embarks on a Teacher Training course in September 2006.

Carol Barratt is an established world leader in music education both as a teacher and composer.

Carol is a former student of the Royal College of Music and after graduating became the first female to be awarded the Martin Musical Scholarship for composition by the Philharmonia Society. She is an Honorary Member of the Royal College of Music.

Over the last few years Carol has been diversifying her talents and her recent collaboration with Boosey & Hawkes Music Publishers has resulted in a number of new publications. The Cat’s Pyjamas, a unique collection of mix and match melodies for beginner pianists, received the Music Industries Association Educational Publication of the Year award in 1996 followed by the ingenious Topsy Turvy Tunes. In 1995 her Six Songs for Singing were chosen to be performed as part of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Composers’ Guild. Recent collaborations include Bravo!, a new series of books for young instrumentalists and the opera Eloise, music by Karl Jenkins, (composer of Adiemus) for which she wrote the libretto.

Carol Barratt is published by Boosey & Hawkes.

Norman Brooke was Director of English and Drama at Millfield Junior School where he (with Steve Gray) wrote and produced a number of musicals; wrote the libretto for West 11’s 1989 production, Koppelberg.

Helen Cooper was born in Holland of Welsh/Dutch parentage.

Her plays include: Mrs. Gauguin, finalist Susan Smith Blackburn Award, (Almeida Theatre, London, Amsterdam, Hamburg and Ghent); Mrs. Vershinin, finalist Susan Smith Blackburn Award, (Riverside Studios, London, Tramway, Glasgow, Theatre der Welt, Hamburg and broadcast on BBC Radio 3.) both directed by Mike Bradwell; The House of Ruby Moon, developed by the Royal National Theatre Studio and premiered at the London New Play Festival; Three Women and a Piano Tuner, finalist Susan Smith Blackburn Award, commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company; and Mothers at the Gate, commissioned by the Hampstead Theatre.

Her translations include: Miss Julie for Greenwich Theatre, Hedda Gabler for Chichester Festival Theatre, and Don Giovanni for Scottish Opera.

She was the dramaturg for Tom Cairns’ production of La Boheme at Stuttgard Opera House and collaborated on the dance piece This is the Picture for the Aletta Collins Dance company.

Her screenplay Miss Julie was directed by Mike Figgis, was highly acclaimed.

Her short film, Station, which she also produced (directed by Jackie Oudney) won the Cinerail de Bronze in Paris, the best British Short film award at the Kino Film Festival in Manchester, the best short film award at the Croydon Film Festival and was nominated as best short film for BAFTA Scotland’s New Talent Award.

She is currently working on a new commission from the Royal Shakespeare Company and on a libretto for the composer Mark Bowden, based on The Mabinogion for W11 Opera.

She has newly been appointed as the dramaturge of Antony MacDonald’s production of Wagner’s Ring for Nationale Reisopera in The Netherlands.

She is a regular tutor at Webster University in Leiden, Holland.

Katie Craik is a librettist, writer and academic. She graduated with a doctorate in Renaissance Literature from King's College Cambridge, and presently works as a lecturer and Research Fellow at Worcester College Oxford. Since writing Stormlight for W11, she has worked again with composer David Knotts on a commission for English National Opera. Bake for One Hour: A Grand Opera at Gas Mark 7 premiered in Spring 2004 at the Clore Space at the London Coliseum. She has also written libretti with David for the education department at Glyndebourne Opera. Her most recent work, an edition of Jane Collier’s An Essay on the Art of Ingeniously Tormenting for Oxford World's Classics, was featured in April 2006 on Radio 4’s Women’s Hour.

I was born in 1927 in the middle of Africa, the second of three brothers. My father was a colonial civil servant, my mother the daughter of a South African farmer. When I was seven my father go a job back in England so that we could go to school here, but he died suddenly only a few months later, leaving my mother with three small boys and a baby, and very little money, so I grew up as one of what was then thought of as the impoverished gentry. Relatives and friends paid for our prep-school education, and I got a scholarship to Eton (bottom of the list in a bad year.)

After Eton I was I was conscripted into the army for two inglorious years, and went on to Cambridge, where I largely wasted my time. I then got a job on the staff of Punch, [literally by nepotism. One of my friends was a nephew of the editor.] On the strength of this I married Mary Rose Barnard, an admiral’s daughter and we started a family, eventually achieving two daughters and two sons.

I stayed for seventeen years as an assistant editor at Punch, writing prose articles and verse, and reviewing, mainly, crime novels. Eventually I had an idea for a crime novel of my own, started writing it on the kitchen table after supper, got stuck half way through,[had a nightmare which I decided might form the basis of a children’s adventure story, and wrote it hoping to unblock the other book, which worked, and by the time I’d written a couple more and had the luck to get them all published I was earning enough to leave Punch and support my family by writing.

Since then I’ve written fifty-odd books of both kinds, including The Seventh Raven, which is based on my time with W11 Opera. Mary Rose died in 1988, and after a year or two I married Robin McKinley, the American writer. We live in a small Hampshire town.

I’m still writing, but much more slowly these days.

Michael Ffinch was born in Kent in 1934, and educated at Repton and Oxford where he read English, tutored for a time by W H Auden. In his late twenties he converted to Roman Catholicism, a dominant thread throughout his life, a life which encompassed schoolteaching, writing, poetry and broadcasting.

He moved to Hampstead in north London to teach. It was at this time that he collaborated with the composer Francis Shaw, writing Fanny by Gaslight and The Selfish Giant (1972), which won first prize in an international opera competition. This was followed by The Tin Knight.

A significant change came when he and his family moved to Westmorland. He was appointed librarian at Sedbergh School, where he also taught English. During this time he published collections of poems, and also a series of topographical books for Hale publishers inspired by his love and knowledge of the area.

Then came a biography of G.K. Chesterton, published in 1986 and shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize. There followed biographies of Cardinal Newman and W.S. Gilbert, and an illustrated volume on his maternal grandfather, the artist Donald Maxwell.

A biography of Dorothy Wordsworth was in preparation when he became ill. He died in 1999.

Christina has written the book and libretti for many opera and music theatre pieces.

For Babel Music Theatre, a company she founded with composer Warren Wills to fuse the skills of actors and opera singers, she has written Weill Lovers, House of Obsession (Vivian Ellis Finalist, and nominated for Best Music Theatre award by Theatre Record). Streetwalker, (Sunday Times Critics Choice). Pin Money Opera, (Best Musical - Carling Fringe Awards). Wedlock, The Opera (Critics Choice), Babel Nights and Mary and the Shaman. Babel Theatre’s House of Obsession was used by The Royal College of Music post-graduate Music Theatre Course, for an end of term showcase at the Britten Theatre.

Other work as book writer/librettist includes: Round Women, Warm Seas and Long Shapes (composer Geoffrey Alvarez), Spider Song (composer Gillian Stevens), Cream-Tease and Timepiece (both with composer Roxanna Panufnik), Light Angel, Dark Angel (composer Derek Barnes) and a large-scale community opera, commissioned by the Royal Opera House: Heroes Don’t Dance (composer Julian Grant). She also worked with Julian on two short operas for Tête a Tête Company: Platform 10 and Odd Numbers. Her most recent collaboration with Julian Grant was A Very Private Beach for ENO Studio (The Knack). Recently, she wrote the book/libretto for Streetwise Opera’s large-scale community opera production, Time Flows: A Handel and Hendrix Experience.

She directed her adaptations of Verdi’s Carmen, Aida, and Mozart’s Magic Flute for opera in education tours. She also directed her modern adaptation of Il Trovatore at the Gulbenkian Theatre and she is associate director of Brit-Pol Theatre Company.

Christina is a music theatre and drama assessor for Trinity College of Music. She is also an experienced actress (Equity name: Tina Jones), with many acting credits, including the Royal Shakespeare Company, Old Vic, Young Vic, West End musicals and television.

John Kane has been an actor and a writer for over forty years during which he has performed sixteen seasons with the Royal Shakespeare Company and written over two hundred television shows. He has written the libretto for three of W11’s operas, Time of Miracles, Antiphony, and Flying High and is now working on a new work with an American composer which will premiere in Boston in 2007.

John is perhaps best known for his adaptation of The Wizard of Oz, which continues to be performed throughout the world. The telefilm Daisies in December 2005 won him a prestigious Cable Ace award for best screenplay.

After many years as a lyricist, in 2005 for the first time, he wrote the music as well as the words for Southwark Playhouse’s adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s The Canterville Ghost. His most prominent role was that of Puck in Peter Brook’s legendary production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Martin Newell is a writer, performer and musician. After twenty years playing in rock bands, he became a successful poet and broadcaster in 1990 He has published ten collections of verse and one pop memoir.

He wrote for The Independent titles for 15 years before taking up his current post as Poet In Residence at the Sunday Express. He appears on TV occasionally and increasingly broadcasts on BBC Radios 3 & 4 as guest presenter. He lives in north-east Essex, where he continues to make records and write books.

www.martinnewell.co.uk

William Radice was born in London in 1951, and has had a very varied career as a poet, translator, and scholar and teacher of Bengali language and literature. He has written more than thirty books, including nine books of his own poems. His translations for Penguin Classics of the poems and stories of the great Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore have been continuously in print for twenty years.

His other books include translations from German; Myths and Legends of India for the Folio Society; and a collection of a hundred Letters from England that he wrote from 1998 to 2002 for the Statesman newspaper in India. In the field of opera, he wrote the libretto for Param Vir’s highly praised chamber opera Snatched by the Gods (1992, based on a narrative poem by Tagore), and in 1995 translated Puccini’s Turandot for English National Opera. His latest book, Green, Red, Gold: A Novel in 101 Sonnets was published in 2005 by Flambard Press and acclaimed by A. N. Wilson in the Daily Telegraph as ‘stunning… at his best he as good as Auden’.

William Radice has given lectures and poetry readings all over India and Bangladesh, in many countries in Europe, and in North America. As a broadcaster, he is known for his regular contributions to BBC Radio 2’s Pause for Thought. He has recently written for the British Council journal Connecting about his experience of creating Chincha-chancha Cooroo. He is Senior Lecturer in Bengali at SOAS, University of London, but in September 2005 went part time to allow more time for writing.

www.williamradice.com

Sarah Shuckburgh was born in 1951, and was brought up in Worcester and Cambridge in a musical family. She was educated at the Perse School for Girls and at London University. She has lived in west London ever since – conveniently near to the W11 Opera. She is a teacher, writer and artist.

Sarah’s first libretto, in 1985, was designed to accompany Saint Saens’ Carnival of the Animals for an open air performance by 150 children and adults on an Oxfordshire hillside. Soon afterwards, Sarah’s daughters, Amy and Hannah, joined the W11 Opera, and Sarah spent several seasons helping behind the scenes before being commissioned to write “Listen to the Earth”, with Steve Gray as composer. In the 1992 production, Sarah’s son Alexander appeared as a rapping Oil Slick.

Later commissions included two libretti for the Piggott’s Family Music Camp in Buckinghamshire.

Sarah is head of Sociology at Queen’s Gate School in London, and writes regularly for the Sunday Telegraph travel section.

www.sarahshuckburgh.com

Born in Paris, 1956. French-British nationality. Brought up in India, Cameroon and southern England. Has lived in France with his family since 1990.

Adam Thorpe is a poet, novelist and playwright. He also writes reviews and articles, mainly for the Guardian , and was poetry critic for the Observer for several years. In 2004 he was the writer-in-residence for the Aldeburgh Music Festival. His novels include Ulverton and The Rules of Perspective and have been translated into several languages. He has written one stage play and seven plays for radio. He is currently working on a novel featuring a contemporary composer with a troubled love life, entitled Between Each Breath (due to be published in June 2007).

Novels:

The Rules of Perspective, Jonathan Cape, London, 2005

No Telling, Cape, London, 2003

Nineteen Twenty-One, Cape, London, 2001

Shifts (short stories), Cape, London, 2000

Pieces of Light, Cape, London, 1998

Still, Secker and Warburg, London, 1995

Ulverton, Secker and Warburg, London, 1992

Poetry:

Nine Lessons from the Dark, Jonathan Cape, London, 2003

From the Neanderthal, Cape, London, 1999

Meeting Montaigne, Secker and Warburg, London, 1990

Mornings in the Baltic, Secker and Warburg, London, 1988

“A writer with exceptional gifts” Sunday Times

“The Rules of Perspective marks Thorpe out... as one of our most significant writers” Scotsman