Gavin Carr

Gavin Carr is a British conductor and baritone working in opera and concert in the UK and around the globe.

Biography

Carr is Music Director of the Bournemouth Symphony Chorus, Wexford Festival Opera Chorus, Chorus Angelorum, Bath Minerva Choir, and Chorus Master of the South West Festival Chorus, and Southern Festival Chorus. His schedule includes opera and concert performances in Europe and further afield, workshops and masterclasses across the UK, and affiliations with colleges such as Chetham's School of Music and Bath Spa University. He is the brother of composer Paul Carr.

Education

Carr was born in London, the son of Adelaide soprano and Covent Garden Prima Donna Una Hale and Theatre Consultant Martin Carr. He studied at the Michael Hall, a Steiner School and Hurstpierpoint College before going to up to King's College, Cambridge to read music and art history, where he was a Choral Scholar in the celebrated Chapel Choir. He was a founder member with Stephen Layton of the now-famous chamber choir Polyphony. He emigrated to Australia for five years, where he began his singing and conducting careers working with the Victoria State Opera and the leading-contemporary music group, the Elision Ensemble. He then studied in the US, with Dickson Titus in San Francisco, and at the Steans Institute in Chicago. Returning to London he studied with Janice Chapman, and at the Britten-Pears School at Snape, Suffolk, studying with Elly Ameling, Hugues Cuenod, Suzanne Danco, and Galina Vishnevskaya.

In the sphere of conducting, he was assistant conductor at Wexford Festival Opera 2005-7, and at the Cantiere d'arte di Montepulciano with Jan Latham-Koenig 2003-5, and on various opera and concert productions throughout Europe, and also observed Sir Charles Mackerras on productions with English National Opera.

Singing career

He has appeared in concert and recital at festivals such as Aldeburgh, Brighton, Dartington, Halle, Ravinia and Sydney and with major orchestras and choruses worldwide, recording for Australian Radio, the BBC and German radio. In Australia with Pipeline Ensemble and the Astra Chamber Music Society he premiered a host of new works and has premiered numerous songs, cantatas and song-cycles, including Michael Finnissy's Not Afraid and Medea; and Alison Bauld's Where should Othello Go?, dedicated to him by the composer. In opera he has sung for in the UK (ENO Barber of Seville, Dido and Aeneas, Four Saints in Three Acts), France (Paris Opéra école lyrique Falstaff, Opéra Nomade Lucia di Lammermoor), Ireland (Opera Ireland Giulio Cesare), Australia (Sydney Transfigured Nights Festival Finnissy Shameful Vice) and Italy (Montepulciano Tippett Knot Garden).

He continues to appear as a singer most recently in Golijov's Ainadamar (CBSO under Robert Spano in Birmingham and London), and in Britten’s War Requiem (Opera Municipal, Santiago, Chile and with the Novaya Opera, Moscow).

Conducting career

In 2003 Gavin Carr returned to conducting, taking on the Directorship of The Athenaeum Singers in Warminster, studying under Sir Charles Mackerras (Makropoulos Case/ENO), and taking positions as Assistant Conductor at the Cantiere Internazionale d'Arte di Montepulciano under Jan Latham-Koenig (Tippett's Knot Garden, Henze's Das Wundertheater and Weill's Mahagonny Songspiel) and at the Wexford Festival under David Agler (Donizetti's Maria di Rohan, Fauré's Pénélope, Susa's Transformations, Dvořák's Rusalka and Donizetti's Don Gregorio). He made his operatic conducting debut at Wexford with the Peter Brook version of Bizet’s Carmen, which was nominated for ‘Best Opera Production of 2007’ in the Irish Times National Arts Awards.

In 2006 he was appointed Associate Principal Conductor of the Bath Philharmonia, with whom he premiered Paul Carr's Requiem for An Angel and has conducted large-scale choral and symphonic repertoire including Brahms' Deutsches Requiem, Beethoven's Mass in C major, Mozart's Requiem and C Minor Mass, and Haydn's Creation with his choruses based in the South West of England, and orchestral music by composers from Monteverdi to Arvo Pärt.

In April 2007 Gavin Carr made his debut with the English Chamber Orchestra, conducting Emma Kirkby, Sarah Connolly and James Gilchrist in the St Matthew Passion in Bath Abbey. For this concert he formed a new professional chamber choir, Chorus Angelorum.

In 2007 he became Chorus Master of the South West Festival Chorus and musical director of the Bath Minerva Choir. In January 2009 he was appointed Music Director of Bristol Bach Choir and in September 2009 he become Chorus Director of the Bournemouth Symphony Chorus.

In 2011 he was appointed Chorus Master by the Wexford Festival Opera to establish and develop a new fully professional opera chorus using promising young artists from around the globe; this position entailed relinquishing his post with Bristol Bach Choir.

In 2011 he began an association with the Raymond Gubbay organisation, conducting an all-Russian symphonic programme at Manchester's Bridgewater Hall. In that year also he premiered a major new oratorio by Richard Blackford, Not in our Time, for the Cheltenham Festival with the Bournemouth Symphony Chorus and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and toured it in 2012 to Chicago. The cd of the work was released by Nimbus Records in 2011. In 2013 he will conduct it with the Bremen Philharmonic in Bremen and Hamburg.

Discography

Singing releases

Conducting releases

References

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