Colin Baldy comes from Lewes, Sussex. His career encompasses performing, teaching, directing (both musical and stage) and writing. He is also an impresario, promoting concerts and operas through both the Maldon Festival and Hand Made Opera. From 2015, Colin will be running the new Scheggino Summer Opera Festival in Umbria, Italy. Although based in the UK and Italy, Colin performs, teaches and directs around the world and works frequently with a variety of organisations in the USA. He has a private practice in London and Rome and gives regular masterclasses at Cernusco Lombardia, near Milan.
As a stage director, Colin has worked for New Chamber Opera, Hand Made Opera, Country Opera and the USU Opera Programme. Productions include Pergolesi, La Serva Padrona, Rossini, Il barbiere di Siviglia and Mozart, Die Entführung aus dem Serail, for Hand Made Opera; Gilbert and Sullivan, Trial by Jury for Hand Made Opera, Wantage Opera and Felsted School; Gilbert and Sullivan, Pirates of Penzance for Maldon Festival; Mozart, Cosi fan tutte for Hand Made Opera, Country Opera, Scheggino Opera and the Caithness Summer School. For New Chamber Opera, he has directed Blow, Venus and Adonis. Colin has a long and fruitful relationship with Utah State University where, in addition to giving choral classes and vocal masterclasses, he has directed Johann Strauss’ Die Fledermaus; Gilbert and Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance and Trial by Jury; Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore; Vaughan Williams’ Riders to the Sea; Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortileges and Menotti’s The old maid and the thief.In 2011, Colin appeared as Sir Arthur Sullivan, in All at Sixes and Sevens at the Kings Head Theatre, Islington. In the play, written by Timothy Knapman, Colin both sang and played the piano in a warm-hearted look at the relationship between Gilbert and Sullivan.
Colin has written several books on vocal technique. The latest, which received rave reviews on both sides of the Atlantic is called The Student Voice and is published by Dunedin Academic Press.
To get more information visit http://www.colinbaldy.com/
Peter Crockford studied at the Birmingham School of Music and the Royal Northern College of Music.
He began his career as a répétiteur with Glyndebourne Festival and Touring Operas, New Sadlers Wells Opera, Wexford Festival Opera and Welsh National Opera. During this time he studied conducting with George Hurst, Colin Metters and Peter Gellhorn. He soon moved on to being a Musical Director and conductor, conducting Mozart’s Cosi fan Tutte at the Commonwealth Institute and the Britten Church Parables in Paris and at the Camden Festival, London.
He was then asked to conduct the European tour of Bernstein’s West Side Story. This led to an invitation to join the staff at the Stadt Theater, Freiburg, Germany where he was Assistant to the General Music Director. After leaving Germany, he toured widely in the middle and Far East taking operas and concerts also to such far flung places as Kathmandu and Karachi.
In Britain he has conducted opera for The Wren Orchestra, Crystal Clear, London City Opera, European Chamber Opera, Dorset Opera and Riverside Opera. He has also conducted orchestral works with: The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, The National Symphony Orchestra, Blackheath String Orchestra, London Percussion Ensemble and St Paul’s Sinfonia. He has always been very active and popular as a vocal coach and accompanist, working with some of the busiest singers in Britain today. He has just cut his first, professional orchestral CD with the St Paul’s Sinfonia