CELEBRATED soprano Joan Rodgers will be on stage at The Sage Gateshead this afternoon – but coaching rather than performing.
She will be passing on the benefits of her 30 years as a professional singer to some of the brightest young performers.
This is the latest of the Samling public masterclasses, which will be followed by a Samling concert on Saturday.
Samling is the Hexham-based charity which lays on week-long residential courses for high-flying young singers and pianists at a country house hotel.
Over the years it has assisted a distinguished list of singers, most of them now ascending the ranks in their concert and operatic careers.
In fact you can read about all of them on Samling’s website, www.samling.org.uk
The Samling masterclass offers some background insight for the keen concert-goer and lover of classical music. Audience members this afternoon will watch as each of the young scholars briefly performs and then is advised on how to improve.
Invariably the sessions are informative and good-natured affairs.
The young singers, you feel, having undergone this public coaching – and often suffered a little gentle ribbing – will be well prepared to tackle anything their professional lives might throw at them. Also, you might think, the public exposure is a small price to pay for the week of cosseted luxury and one-to-one coaching they will have been receiving at the Farlam Hall Hotel, near Brampton, Cumbria.
Joan Rodgers studied at the Royal Northern College of Music after graduating from Liverpool University with a degree in Russian. She won the coveted Kathleen Ferrier Memorial Scholarship.
The current intake of scholars are sopranos Elin Pritchard (British) and Suzanne Shakespeare (Australian), mezzo-soprano Martha Jones (British), tenors Andrew Dickinson (British) and Sipho Fubesi (South African), baritone Cozmin Sime (Romanian) and pianists Jean-Paul Pruna (French) and Alice Turner (British).
The Samling Masterclass is in Hall Two of The Sage Gateshead at 2pm. The Samling Concert, when the scholars will show us what they have learnt, is on Saturday at 7pm in the same venue. Tickets for both from the Sage box office: 0191 443 4661.
A Samling showcase concert, celebrating the charity’s 15 years of work, will take place at London’s Wigmore Hall on December 9. It will feature Samling patron Sir Thomas Allen and outstanding past scholars including soprano Sally Matthews, mezzo-soprano Kitty Whately and baritone Njabulo Madlala. Box office: 020 7935 2141.