Baritone James Atkinson offers Hastings concert

Tickets £15 include coffee and cake and can be booked from fairlighthall.co.uk.

The programme will be: Robert Schumann – Liederkreis Op 39; Madeleine Dring – Three Shakespeare Songs; and Maurice Ravel – Histoires Naturelles.

Spokeswoman Dominika Hicks said: “James and Oxford Lieder’s artistic director Sholto Kynoch begin their programme with one of Schumann’s most popular song cycles (Liederkreis). In many ways, it’s the epitome of the Romantic song cycle, full of love, longing and nature. They follow that with three settings of Shakespeare by the composer – and actor – Madeleine Dring. These wonderful songs are by turns exciting and poignant, with a film-score feel as one might expect for a composer who also wrote for the theatre and screen. Their programme concludes with Maurice Ravel’s Histoires Naturelles (Natural Histories), five and colourful and joyously irreverent songs that deliver a brilliant commentary on familiar personalities, via the strutting peacock, the vain swan and the belligerent guinea fowl.”

British baritone James Atkinson is a graduate of the Royal College of Music Opera Studio. He won first prize at the Maureen Lehane Vocal Awards 2018, first prize and the audience prize at the Somerset Song Prize 2019 and the Schubert Prize at the Mozart Competition 2019.

James is in demand as a recitalist and has performed at the North Norfolk Music Festival, London Song Festival, the Lewes Song Festival, the Ludlow English Song Weekend, and the Red House, Aldeburgh.

His September 2021 recital with Sholto Kynoch at the Lammermuir Festival was broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 as the Lunchtime Live Concert. He has made multiple appearances at the Oxford Lieder Festival, including two lecture-recitals with Natasha Loges: Clara Schumann: Rethinking the Myth in 2019 and Brahms’s Circle and the Musical Past in 2020. James also appeared in Oxford Lieder’s Winter into Spring festival in 2021, live-streamed from the Holywell Music Room.