The Friends of Blackheath Halls present a Lunchtime Recital:
1.10pm Monday 23rd March 2015
ADELE PAXTON
soprano
SARAH DOWN
piano
“Adèle Paxton was delightful as Papagena.”
The Boston Globe
“Adèle Paxton’s performance was nothing short of
stunning, an intensely musical voice, rich and
warm which went straight to the heart, evoking
completely the spirit of the poetry.” The Orcadian
MARCELLO Il mio bel foco
HERBERT HOWELLS King David
STRAUSS & MAHLER selected songs
DVORÁK Rusalka’s Song to the Moon
SARAH MENEELY-KYDER Five Scottish Songs (UK premiere)
KURT WEILL Surabaya Johnny - Alabama Song What good would the moon be?
An acclaimed international soprano, Adèle Paxton was winner of the Royal
Over-Seas League Gold Medal and the Mary Garden International Medal.
She has sung throughout Europe, in USA where she now lives, and in South
America. Venues include the Alice Tully Hall, Wigmore Hall, The Barbican,
Royal Festival Hall, St Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey.
Blackheath Halls, 23 Lee Road, London SE3 9RQ
Free admission - retiring collection for the Halls.
The Friends of Blackheath Halls,
regd charity no. 1023390.
Adèle Paxton was winner of the Mary Garden International Medal and the Royal Over-Seas
League Gold Medallist. She has sung throughout Europe, in USA where she now lives, and in
South America. Venues include the Alice Tully Hall, Wigmore Hall, The Barbican, Royal
Festival Hall, St Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey. International Festivals include
Glyndebourne, Wexford, Buxton and Aldeburgh. She has worked with conductors Sir Edward
Downes, Sir Charles Mackerras, Steuart Bedford and David Angus, and with directors including
Elijah Moshinsky, Gian Carlo Menotti, Nikolaus Lehnhof, Stephen Lawless and Christopher
Alden. She appeared as first niece in a production of Britten’s Peter Grimes by Covent Garden
Opera which toured to Palermo, Sicily, with Ben Heppner in the title role.
Adèle teaches voice on faculty at Central Connecticut State University as well as maintaining a
private studio. Adèle is particularly interested in voice work as a healing process and in the
connection of mind and body through the medium of breath. She teaches advanced vocal
technique and repertoire as well as essential breath connection and a therapeutic approach to
understanding the voice.
Adèle recently completed a Bibliography of The Song Settings of the English poet Walter de la
Mare, published as a separate edition of the Walter de la Mare Society Journal.
For this recital Adèle has specially commissioned Five Scottish Songs which have been written for
her by Sarah Meneely-Kyder - Sea-Tangle Lament, An Eriskay Love Lilt, The Fidgety Bairn,
Morag’s Cradle Song and Aignish on the Machair. This will be the UK premiere performance of
the songs. Sarah Meneely-Kyder will be at the recital and will introduce her compositions.
Sarah Down studied piano at the Royal Academy of Music with Alexander Kelly and later with
Paul Hamburger and Lilli Skauge. She worked extensively with Martin Issep and Ralf Kothoni at
the Britten Pears School at Snape. She was then appointed staff accompanist at the school where
she was privileged to work alongside artists including Ileana Cotrubas, Janine Reiss, Jerzy
Macszymiuk, Steuart Bedford and Nancy Evans. She is a founder member of the Ellerdale Trio
with whom she has performed regularly over the last fourteen years.
Sarah made her Purcell Room debut as an accompanist in 1982 and her concerto debut in the
Queen Elizabeth Hall in 1986. Since then she has been in demand as accompanist, soloist, opera
repetiteur, chamber musician and teacher. She has regularly collaborated with Adèle Paxton in
recitals in the UK. She has recorded for Radio 3 and Classic FM and a CD of songs by Walter
Leigh with the soprano Elizabeth Nash.
Sarah returns to the Halls on 18th May for a lunchtime recital with Ellerdale Trio when they will
play Beethoven’s Archduke Trio and two movements from Black July 1974, a new piano trio by
Cilia Petridou which they recorded last year on the Divine Art label.
Composer/pianist Sarah Meneely-Kyder (b. 1945) is a graduate of Goucher College, Peabody
Conservatory and Yale University. Her composition teachers have included Robert Hall Lewis,
Earle Brown and Robert Morris. In the years following her formal education in the Western
musical tradition, she studied the North Indian sitar and was eventually initiated by Roop
Verma, a student of world-renowned sitarist, Ravi Shankar. She has also studied the South
Indian veena. As a composer, most notable are those works that fuse disparate musical traditions
into single pieces. Numerous choral works have been performed by respected choral organizations
throughout Greater New England.
Prior to any formal musical training, she cites the ancestral influence of her family’s bell casting
activity. The Meneely Bell Foundries, located in Watervliet and Troy, New York, manufactured
bells for sites in both the United States and Europe from 1826 to 1952.
In April of 2013, she premiered her large-scale oratorio Letter from Italy, 1944 to a sold-out house,
with a strikingly enthusiastic audience response. This composition was the inspiration for a
filmed documentary by Karyl Evans, narrated by Meryl Streep.
Meneely-Kyder has done two recordings for CD on the North/South Recordings label, the second
of which was nominated for a Grammy in 2003. As a pianist, she is most interested in the
performance of contemporary music, with specialization in 20th century American music. She has
performed with the New London Contemporary Ensemble, the Nutmeg Chamber Ensemble, and
at Wesleyan University, where for 22 years she has served on the faculty as an instructor of
composition, piano, and chamber music.