adam gorb
Adam Gorb (born 1958) studied Music at Cambridge University and Composition at the Royal Academy of Music in London, where he graduated with the highest honours including the Principal’s Prize, in 1993. His compositions include orchestral, ensemble, chamber, solo and choral works, and have been performed, broadcast and recorded world-wide. In the UK his compositions have had performances at contemporary music festivals in Huddersfield, Cheltenham, Hampstead and Highgate, Spitalfields and Canterbury, and he has had concerts entirely devoted to his music in the UK, the USA and Canada. He has been featured composer at Luton and Bromsgrove music clubs and Oxford University. His concert band composition Metropolis has won several prizes, including the Walter Beeler Memorial Prize in the USA in 1994. Three other Wind Ensemble works: Towards Nirvana, Adrenaline City and Farewell have won British Composer Awards.
Adam Gorb’s works have been performed by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, the Maggini Quartet, the BBC Singers, the Tokyo Kosei Wind Ensemble, the Royal Marines and the Liverpool 10/10 ensemble. In 2010 a CD devoted to his works was released on the NMC label, and in the same year a large scale choral work Eternal Voices written with librettist Ben Kaye was premiered in Exeter cathedral, and has been performed in several cathedrals around the UK. In 2012 his opera Anya 17 (librettist Ben Kaye) was premiered in Liverpool and Manchester to great acclaim, and has since been performed in Romania and Germany in 2013, San Francisco in 2014 and Los Angeles in 2016.
Recent Wind Ensemble works include Bohemian Revelry (2013), Concerto for Cello and Wind Ensemble (2013) and Pike’s Peak (2017.) A CD devoted to his work: Dancing in the Ghetto was released in 2016 Adam Gorb has taught and lectured in many European countries, the USA, Canada and Japan. He is Head of School of Composition at the Royal Northern College of Music.
Ben kaye
Ben Kaye is an award-winning Librettist, Poet, and Author who has collaborated on projects ranging from Oratorios to Operas with many of the finest Composers in the UK. His critically acclaimed works have often featured in international BBC broadcasts, as well as having enjoyed performances all over the UK, in continental Europe, Eastern Europe, Canada and the USA. Described by BBC Radio 3's Sean Rafferty as "Powerful stuff. A protest Cantata, the first of a genre.", Kaye’s Oratorio Thoughts Scribbled on a Blank Wall with composer Adam Gorb and Journalist John McCarthy CBE exposed the mental torture John underwent during his five year incarceration in The Lebanon with Church of England Envoy Terry Waite CBE and Brian Keenan CBE.
Kaye has a reputation for tackling seemingly impossible subjects. His Oratorio Eternal Voices with Composer Adam Gorb, commissioned by Her Majesty’s Royal Marines (with Sir Trevor McDonald OBE) saw him spend six months with the families of Soldiers killed or brutally mutilated by IEDs in Afghanistan. Ben’s following work The Farthest Shore with ‘Royal Composer’ Paul Mealor explored the terrible plight of Refugees fleeing terrorism, war and persecution, and was given the singular honour of a live international BBC broadcast before further performances in the UK, Canada and the USA.
Then came his Opera Anya17 with Adam Gorb, the first written to expose Human Trafficking, which was feted at The House of Lords, 10 Downing Street, won an award at The House of Commons before being credited with helping to change UK Law on Human Trafficking. The Opera then toured the UK, went to Romania, Germany, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Kaye’s latest life-affirming work Hope with the award-winning American Composer C.G. “Sonny Walden” was performed in April 2018 in Boston as part of the fifth anniversary commemorations of the Boston Marathon Bombings in a special concert entitled “Five Years Later: Songs of Hope and Resilience”.
stefan janski
Stefan Janski is an award winning freelance stage director, writer and lecturer.
Credits incude: RNCM Head of Opera, Mananan Opera, Sadler’s Wells Opera, English National Opera, Glyndebourne Festival and Touring Opera, Scottish Opera, Los Angeles Opera, Northern Ireland Opera Trust, Wexford Festival Opera, London and Oxford Universities, York University, British Youth Opera, National Opera Studio, Opera Viva, Royal Academy of Music, Scrap and Scratch Opera, Royal Ballet of Flanders Musical Company, AsLiCo European Studio, Beijing University and Fuzhou, Nantes Opera, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Buxton Opera Festival, Uzerche Festival, Cheltenham Festival, Manchester Camerata, Vilnius European Opera, New Music Festival ISCM world Music Days, Lancaster University, UK/LA Festival, Cardiff Opera, Lake District Summer School Festival, City of London Festival, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Barbican, BBC Proms, Royal Academy of Music and Drama, Halle Orchestra, BBC The Late Show, Ryedale Festival, Aix en Provence Festival, Hereford Summer School, New Sussex Opera, Morley College Opera, Goldberg Festival Opera, Compton Verney, Mountview Theatre, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Curtain Theatre in Education, Philbeach Opera, Christ’s Hospital, Carnegie Trust, Middlesex Polytechnic, BBC Blue Peter - Blue Badge Recipient.
Stefan is President of the Bowdon Youth Festival and Patron of the City of Manchester Opera.
Future plans include: Don Pasquale, World Premieres of Casanovas’s Women and Juan.
mark heron
Mark Heron is a Scottish conductor known for dynamic and well-rehearsed performances across an unusually wide range of repertoire, and his expertise as an orchestral trainer.
As guest conductor he has appeared with the, BBC Philharmonic, Philharmonia, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Manchester Camerata, Psappha, Meininger Hofkapelle, Orquesta Sinfónica de la Región de Murcia, Pori Sinfonietta, St Petersburg Festival Orchestra and many more. He is the music director of the Nottingham Philharmonic and as a member of the conducting staff at the Royal Northern College of Music, he works regularly with all of the College’s orchestras and ensembles. Mark is the conductor laureate of the Liverpool Mozart Orchestra and for ten years was Director of Orchestras at the University of Manchester.
Dedicated to working with young musicians, in addition to his roles at the RNCM and Manchester University, Mark has conducted ensembles from the Royal Academy of Music, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Tilburg & Maastricht Conservatories, the National Youth Wind Orchestras of Great Britain and Israel, Slovenian National Youth Orchestra, and many more.
Mark has a keen interest in contemporary music and has given world premieres of many important works. He has collaborated with leading composers such as Heiner Goebbels, Magnus Lindberg, Sir James McMillan, Colin Matthews, Mark Anthony Turnage, Giya Kancheli, Unsuk Chin, Kalevi Aho, Detlev Glanert, Christopher Rouse, Bernard Rands and Howard Skempton. In 2018 he gave the the world premiere of Adam Gorb's opera The Path to Heaven, and in 2006 the European premiere of American composer Daron Hagen’s opera, Bandanna. He has recorded dozens of CDs with the RNCM Wind Orchestra featuring contemporary wind repertoire on labels such as Chandos, Naxos, NMC, ASC and Polyphonic.
Mark studied at the RSAMD and the RNCM. Following a successful chamber music career and freelance work with many of the UK’s professional symphony orchestras, he undertook conducting studies at the RNCM and in master classes with Neeme & Paavo Järvi, Jorma Panula, and Sir Mark Elder. He worked with Sir Colin Davis and the London Symphony Orchestra on their mentoring programme for young conductors.
Alongside his conducting engagements, Mark is increasingly recognised as one of the world's foremost conducting teachers, and students of his have achieved notable success. As well as his work across all of the RNCM's renowned conducting programmes, he developed an elite undergraduate conducting programme at the University of Manchester, is a visiting professor to the Royal Air Force and appears often as a guest at conducting courses and master classes all over the world.