Musical Direction

Dr David Skinner (DPhil, Oxon) is Fellow and Osborn Director of Music at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, and artistic director of the early music ensemble Alamire (www.alamire.co.uk). His research has centred around music institutions, manuscripts and composers of 16th-century Europe, and is particular specialism is music and the Reformation in England. A large portion of his doctoral thesis was published in the Roxburghe Club volume The Arundel Choirbook (Arundel: Duke of Norfolk, 2003), and he has since published a number of music editions, facsimile volumes, and articles. as well as more than 30 commercial recordings (awards including Gramophone, BBC Music, Limelight, Times CD of the Year, and others). Dr Skinner’s recent publications include The Anne Boleyn Music Book: Facsimile with Introduction, DIAMM Facsimiles 6 (London: Royal College of Music, 2017), and ‘‘Deliuer me from my deceytful ennemies’: A Tallis Contrafactum in Time of War’, Early Music (Oxford University Press, 2017). The latter project, in which Queen Catherine Parr was identified as the author of a contrafact of Tallis’s grandest antiphon Gaude gloriosa dei mater, received wide media coverage including all major broadsheets, BBC 4 Today Programme and BBC Breakfast News. As a presenter he has worked extensively for BBC radio, appearing in and writing a variety of shows on Radio 3 and 4. He acted as music advisor for the Music and Monarchy series on BBC 2 with David Starkey, and was Music Consultant for the recent BBC4 documentary on the history of Evensong with Lucy Worsley. He is currently completing a new edition of Tallis’s Latin church music for Early English Church Music (Stainer & Bell).​

David is very happy to see choral and organ candidates at any time of the year. To arrange a visit to Sidney Sussex, please email Choir@sid.cam.ac.uk.

Australian-born mezzo-soprano Lynette Alcántara teaches singing to the Choral Scholars at Sidney Sussex, Wolfson and Queens Colleges. She is a Fellow of Wolfson College and has been Director of Music there since 1998. She has been guest chorus master for the Cambridge Philharmonic Chorus and Saffron Walden Choral Society and for many years was vocal coach for the CU Symphony Chorus. Lynette has a thriving singing teaching practice in Cambridge with pupils regularly being awarded Choral Scholarships at Oxbridge and post-graduate places to music colleges around the world. For twelve years she taught singing to the trebles of the Choir of King’s College Cambridge, preparing soloists for recordings, services and concerts, including the annual BBC TV and radio broadcasts, and for Her Late Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II.

Pupil successes include 2015/16 winner of BBC Radio 2 Young Girl Chorister of the Year, appearances on TV programme Grantchester, dueting with Rolando Villazon, and soloists at BBC Proms. Recent pupils have been awarded places at the Royal College of Music, National Opera Studio, Royal Academy of music and The Manhattan School of Music, and have gone on to work for Welsh National Opera, Voces 8, BBC Singers, Tenebrae, Alamire & Edvard Grieg Vokal Ensemble.

For twenty-five years Lynette sang as a staff alto with the BBC Singers and, when time allowed, as soloist and chorus member for other leading ensembles in Britain including The Monteverdi Choir, Opera Rara, Schűtz Choir, English National Opera, Opera North, The Bach Choir and The King’s Consort. She appeared regularly for BBC radio and TV, and frequently at the Royal Albert Hall and on the South Bank. Cambridge performances include regular song recitals with accompanists including Patrick Hemmerle, David Hill, Andrew Goldman, Stephen Betteridge, Fusae Takahashi and Douglas Hollick. Solos on disk include Shallow Brown on the Gramophone Award winning The Choral Music of Percy Grainger & Schubert’s Ständchen (both for Gardiner/Monteverdi Choir).

Lynette has led singing workshops for the BBC Singers, The King’s Singers, The Choir of King’s College Cambridge, Britten Sinfonia and Aldeburgh Music. She is particularly interested in voice science and its application to vocal pedagogy and is a member of the British Voice Association and Association of Teachers of Singing. For many years she lectured on Vocal Health and Pedagogy on the MMus in Choral Studies at the Faculty of Music at Cambridge University, also co-ordinating and leading the Vocal Pathway of the same course.

She has been teaching since her student days where she was awarded a Bachelor of Music Education with double Honours in Vocal Performance and Education at the University of Melbourne where she was also a Choral Scholar in Trinity Chapel Choir. After university she sang in the Chorus and Young Artists’ Encouragement Programme of the Victoria State Opera. Winning the national Liederfest Scholarship enabled her to travel to the UK to further her vocal studies, and she has remained in the UK since.

Lynette has stepped back from performing to teach and conduct. Between 2022-24 she was Director of the Song School at OLEM Catholic Church, and founded the children’s music charity KJV Community Children’s Choir, a hundred-voice Cambridge children’s choir which is free so that all children can experience choral singing regardless of their personal circumstances. The choir celebrated its 15th anniversary in 2023. With KJV she has worked with The King’s Singers, broadcast on Classic FM at Christmas, and conducted Friday Afternoons, part of the worldwide online schools’ project to celebrate Britten’s centenary. The choir has collaborated with Cambridge Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus, and performed at a recent fundraiser for a new children’s hospital in Cambridge.

Website: www.lynettealcantara.com
 

Bradley Smith began his musical training as a chorister at St Albans Cathedral under Barry Rose
and Andrew Lucas. Enamoured with choral music he later went on to study music at St John’s
College, Cambridge, where he was a Choral Scholar and subsequently Lay-Clerk. While at
Cambridge he conducted various choirs and orchestras through numerous large-scale collaborative
works. He was also the Musical Director of the close harmony ensemble The Gentlemen of St
John’s for two years, during which time he arranged, toured and recorded.

He went on to study for a Masters in Voice at the Royal Academy of Music and subsequently joined
their prestigious Opera Programme. For the Royal Academy he played Tom Rakewell/The Rake’s
Progress, the Male Chorus/The Rape of Lucretia, le Prince Charmant/Cendrillon, and le petit
vieillard/L’enfant et les sortileges with the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican. While at the
Academy he was made a member of their elite Song Circle, performing Lieder at major concert
halls around the UK. He was a prize-winning finalist in the Joan Chissel Prize for Schumann
Lieder, winner of the Blythe-Buesst Aria Prize, winner of the Tom Hammond Opera Prize, and
awarded the coveted Diploma of the Royal Academy which is rewarded to a handful of students
who deliver an outstanding Final Recital.

His career has enabled a comfortable balance between the opera stage and the concert platform.
In his oratorio work he is regularly engaged to sing the evangelist and tenor solos in the Bach
passions, Handel’s Messiah, and other repertory staples with major orchestras internationally. He
performs regularly at St John’s Smith Square, the Cadogan Hall, King’s Place, Birmingham
Symphony Hall, the Royal Festival Hall and with the Hanover Band. Recent highlights include
engagements in Italy France, Scandinavia, and Germany, working with pianist Angela Hewitt and
harpsichordist Stephen Devine, including performances of Britten’s Serenade for Tenor and Horn,
Schumann’s Liederkreis Op. 39, Fauré’s La bonne chanson, Britten’s War Requiem, and Bach’s
Christmas Oratorio for the Odensee Symphony Orchestra.

Operatic highlights include Damon/Acis and Galatea (English National Opera), Mr Denham/True
Story of King Kong (Theater Magdeburg), Albert Herring/Albert Herring (Buxton International
Festival), Trojan/Idomeneo (Garsington Opera), Prince Ramir/Cendrillon (Bampton Classical
Opera), Tamino/Die Zauberflöte (LFO Young Artists’ Tour), and Peter Quint/The Turn of the Screw
(Opera Holland Park). Bradley was also a member of the Glyndebourne Festival Opera Chorus for
Rameau’s Hippolyte et Aricie.

Following success at the International Singing Competition for Baroque Opera Pietro Antonio
Cesti, Bradley performed the role of Lelio in Cesti’s Le nozze in sogno as part of the Innsbruck
Festival of Early Music with performances at the Salzburg Mozarteum, then returning the following
year to the Innsbruck Landestheater for performances of Cesti’s La Dori as part of the Festwochen
der alten Musik, live-streamed across Europe and recently released on DVD. He also played the
role of Oduardo for the English Concert’s performances of Ariodante at Theater an der Wien, the
Barbican, the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, and the Théâtre Champs-Élysées.

Alongside his singing career, Bradley has maintained a full schedule of teaching and choral
directing. He is the Director of Music at Clifford Chance LLP, where he teaches singing and runs
their award-winning choir, which he founded and opened up internationally to their 35 global
offices. The choir comprises this who participate both live and online in 11 countries. He also runs
two choirs in London for whom he composes, writes arrangements, and instructs on vocal
technique. He is also the Musical Director of the Peterborough Choral Society and the Director of
Music of the Nine Bridges Benefice Choir in Cambridgeshire.

Bradley trained for a Licentiate of the Royal Academy of Music in Vocal Teaching while at
conservatoire and was awarded a high distinction for his efforts. His experience as a performer
lends itself to a comprehensive vocal pedagogy. He works technically and anatomically to ensure
that his students understand the fundamental components of their vocal structure. This leads to a
more stable, reliable and automatic vocal process, which then allows for a focus on drama and
musical interpretation. Bradley specialises in methods which are designed to help individuals with
high-powered and high-stress jobs in the city, and has developed an array of tailored exercises
which use the voice in order to release stress, provide creative distraction, and ensure a more
rounded artistic singer by the end of a lesson or rehearsal. His years in the choir stalls and on stage
help put these ideas into action and bring the voice to life, helping to make relevant that which can
sometimes be an abstract process.

Bradley also teaches at Cambridge University with students from many of the colleges. He holds a
teaching position at Selwyn, Downing, Sidney-Sussex and Trinity Hall Colleges where he instructs,
coaches, and advises the choral scholars. He is also the College Vocal Tutor at St John’s, where he
works individually with all of the choristers and some of the choral scholars, as well as full-choir
training, ensemble work, language and repertoire coaching.

Bradley is also the vocal coach for the Lay Clerks of Southwell Minster, and teaches a large number
of professional singers who can regularly be found on opera and concert stages internationally,
touring with world-famous consorts, or singing with cathedral choirs in London. Bradley is fast
becoming one of the most sought-after vocal instructors in the UK and Europe, hosting
masterclasses in Italy, France, Switzerland and Germany.

For further details, please visit www.bradleysmith-tenor.co.uk