Tomos Watkins Nov.qxp_Layout 1 22/10/2018 15:20 Page 1
MUSIC
THE SONGS YOU SING
Bath Premier Chamber Choir, A Handful of Singers, has a new musical director. Hailed as an exciting young talent, Emma Clegg asks Tomos Watkins what he will bring to the choral repertoire radically connected to everything else; you’d be surprised how often topics as seemingly unrelated as Stanislawski, anatomy and 19th-century European politics can come up in one rehearsal.” Does a talented choir make the life of the conductor easier? “The joy and the challenge of working with A Handful of Singers is that they’re pretty good – the bit that’s really interesting is what to do with a piece once the notes are all right, and that constantly stretches the conductor.”
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Singing speaks to our shared humanity in a way that is unfamiliar and essential against a culture that is consumerist and materialistic
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ome people have music in their bones. Tomos Watkins certainly does: “Music has been in the background of my life since I was a nipper – my parents are both musicians, but I can remember clearly the concert that really converted me. It was Bach’s Concerto for Violin and Oboe. The next day my dad gave me The Brandenburg Concertos, and from there it was a slippery slope.” Tomos did have other childhood passions, though: “My very first instrument was the violin, which I quickly abandoned because the lessons were always on Saturday mornings and clashed with Power Rangers.” Born in Cardiff, Tomos Watkins recently graduated with distinction from his Master’s in Choral Conducting from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. Prior to this he was organ scholar of Pembroke College Oxford, where he was responsible for the chapel choir, and musical director of one of Oxford’s leading chamber choirs, The Arcadian Singers. He also led a semiprofessional chamber choir, Plebs Angelica. Tomos is a talented professional singer and accompanist working with the Welsh National Opera, Channel 4 and the Eton Choral Courses. Explaining his motivation Tomas says, “The thing about choral conducting that really interests me, as opposed to orchestral conducting, is the interaction of text and music and the fact that singing has a closer connection to the rest of our lives and existences as humans than almost anything else. “Choirs are fascinating beings – they can represent one narrator, loads of different ones or none at all. Working with choirs is
As a conductor, does Tomos feel part of the music or rather enabling of it? “Both”, he replies, “but on occasions more one than the other. Sometimes conducting is musical logistics, but at other times the music is totally part of you, and usually you’re the only one allowed to dance to it!” What relevance has choral music to our contemporary age? “Singing speaks to our shared humanity in a way that is unfamiliar and essential against a culture that is consumerist and materialistic,” says Tomas. “I read recently that 18–24-year-olds are one
Tomos Watkins of the loneliest groups in society, despite their being more technologically connected to society than ever. Singing together is completely vital to human identity, and is a method of connecting with other people in a way that is totally beyond what we can do through a screen.” The first concert of the 2018/19 season on 1 December, performed at St Mary’s Church, Bathwick at 7.30pm, is a programme of exquisite music based on the theme of pilgrimage. Works by three German composers of the Romantic period, Mendelssohn, Brahms and Rheinberger, are interspersed with repertoire by four twentieth century American composers, Elliot Carter, Samuel Barber and Stephen Paulus. The programme concludes with Randall Thompson’s epic suite Frostiana, one that Tomos didn’t know terribly well when he programmed it, but it has become a real favourite: “Randall Thompson has set seven different poems by Robert Frost and each one has a very particular colour. He’s understood the texts deeply, and the musical outcome is as appealing and melodic as it is rigorous and intellectually satisfying.” Tomos lives in a village near Cardiff, but is on the move constantly: “One of the nice things about working freelance is that most of the time nobody makes you get up early, but it can be strange going to work when everyone else is sitting down for their evening meal. This variety is what keeps it interesting though – over the summer I was working at St John’s College Cambridge and at Llandaff North Rugby Club on consecutive days.”
A Handful of Singers • Find out more at: ahandfulofsingers.org 44 TheBATHMagazine
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nOVeMBeR 2018
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issue 194
