Helen Neeves – soprano
Richard Pearce – piano

The Programme

Helen Neeves – soprano
Richard Pearce – piano

Selected Songs

‘Sing My Name’ – song cycle with text by Marianne James

The Artists

Helen Neeves has many years of experience as a solo and consort singer, encompassing concert work, recordings and radio broadcasts. After graduating from the University of York, Helen went on to study performance at the Royal College of Music.

As well as being a current member of the BBC Singers, Helen has sung with many other vocal ensembles including The Sixteen, The Clerks Group, I Fagiolini, Gabrieli Consort, Amsterdam Baroque and Theatre of the Ayre. She recently sang with Yorkshire Baroque Soloists for a programme of Buxtehude and Bach in the York Early Music Festival. Future engagements include a recital in Maldon with The Austen Trio. Helen regularly works as an oratorio soloist, including in recent years: Brahms Requiem, Fauré Requiem, Bach St John Passion, Poulenc Gloria with the Royal Choral Society, Handel Laudate Pueri with Finchley Choral Society and Mozart Requiem with Canterbury Choral Society.

As an admirer of Jane Austen Helen enjoys being part of the Austen Trio – the group performs music loved and played by Jane Austen and her family. In addition to giving recitals they have released a CD ‘Jane Austen’s Musical Treasures’. Helen also very much enjoys composing and arranging music with an emphasis on writing for voices.

Richard Pearce was organ scholar at Trinity College, Cambridge, then studied piano accompaniment at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, where he now teaches.

Richard records and broadcasts with the BBC Singers as organist, pianist and conductor. He has a long-standing association with the Royal Choral Society, performing with them many times a year at the Royal Albert Hall in London. This December he is playing organ in seventeen Christmas concerts in their Christmas festival. He conducts Romsey Choral Society and Waverley Singers in Farnham, and will perform Mendelssohn Elijah and Handel Saul with them this season. Richard is regular organist with the Philharmonia and BBC Symphony Orchestras, and plays for the Last Night of the Proms.