Simon Fletcher Charitable Trust

The music goes on...

Registered Charity No. 1094808

Simon Fletcher Charitable Trust News

April 2008: Helen-Jane Howells, a 27-year-old soprano, has been chosen to receive the Trust’s 2008 award of £1500 for singers. Helen-Jane is due to begin her second year on the Royal College of Music’s postgraduate opera course in September. She trained and worked as a music teacher before committing herself to full-time vocal study at the RCM. She has taken many principal roles with choral societies and opera companies in her native Wales and around the rest of the UK.

An award of £1000 was also made to Nicholas Lester, 27, an Australian baritone. Nicholas, who has been working and studying in the UK for the past five years, including appearances with Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Opera Holland Park and English Touring Opera, embarks on a one-year course at the National Opera Studio in September.

Soprano Meeta Raval, 25, was given £750 to help support her through a second year of the opera course at the Royal Academy of Music.

A special award of £500 was also made to Ruth Jenkins, 21, of Newcastle upon Tyne, who begins a two-year postgraduate vocal studies course at the Royal Academy of Music in September.

December 2007: Our Winter Serenade concert at Craxton Studios attracted a full house of more than 80 Trust supporters and friends.

Four of our recent award-winning vocalists, Rhona McKail, Alinka Kozari, Ronald Nairne and Elias Benito Arranz, sang excerpts from opera and oratorio.

They were joined by another award recipient, Nicholas Wright, who specialises in playing the natural trumpet. He performed works by Baldassare and Corelli.

The evening, presided over by chairman Chris Loake, was topped by a delicious supper provided by Pat Syme and her team from Joseph Catering. Thanks are also due to Jane Craxton for the use of such a marvellous venue.

August 2007: A special award of £600 has been made to Nicholas Wright, a talented and rare musician in that he plays a natural trumpet – the original valveless instrument used in the Baroque period. The award is to help him buy a new mouthpiece for his instrument and for further tuition. A student at the Royal Northern College of Music, Nicholas told us: “It sounds like a relatively insignificant accessory but the correct mouthpiece for authentic trumpet is often more important to a player than the actual instrument.”

May 2007: Following auditions last month, the 2007 Simon Fletcher award of £1500 was made to Rhona McKail, a 25-year-old Scottish soprano due to start on the opera course at the Guildhall School of Music in September this year. Rhona has a rich soprano voice and a warm personality and is using the award towards the cost of living and studying in London.

A second award of £1,000 was made to Elias Benito Arranz, a 28-year-old baritone from Barcelona on a postgraduate course at the Royal Academy of Music, and a third award of £750 went to Ronald Nairne, 26, a bass postgraduate of the RAM who from September this year will be on a one-year training programme at the National Opera Studio.

September 2006: Apart from the awards made in May we were able to give £500 to baritone Viktor Rud, our first awardee (2003), now graduated from the Royal Academy of Music and on the postgraduate course at the National Opera Studio. Victor sang the leading role in the British Youth Opera production of Don Giovanni in the summer and needed help with his subsistence.

Continuing support of £500 towards additional vocal coaching was given to one of our 2005 Award recipients, baritone Krzysztof Szumanski, now on a two-year contract with the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.

East Sussex Music Service received £600 from the Trust to help buy a ‘cello and a flute for two schoolchildren from low-income families desperate to expand their musical interest but whose parents were unable to purchase or even rent an instrument.

Ms Sarah Fenton, a single mother on limited income applied for help on behalf of her seven-year-old son Guy Fenton who had won a choral scholarship to Exeter Cathedral. A contribution of £150 was made towards the cost of Guy’s £300 uniform.

Finally, one of our finalists in the 2003 award, soprano Sian Jones, needed £135 towards travel and subsistence in order to sing in the Buxton Gilbert and Sullivan Festival in the summer. As a direct result of her performance, Sian was invited to go on a UK tour with the Carl Rosa Company to the USA and Canada in the New Year.

May 2006: The Simon Fletcher Trust award of £1,000 went this year to Hanna Husahr, a 26-year-old Swedish soprano who has graduated as Bachelor of Music (Hons) from the Guildhall School of Music and is continuing her studies privately in London

Two special awards of £500 each were made to Alinka Kozari, 26, a Hungarian soprano now at the National Opera Studio, and to Stuart McDermott, a 26-year-old British tenor studying at the Royal Academy of Music in London.

March 2006: The fundraising evening on March 19 at the Craxton Studios, Kidderpore Avenue, Hampstead, was a great success. The studios themselves, in an Edwardian house of great charm and character, lent a warm and pleasing ambience to a soiree that was all about good music, good food and good company.

More than 70 guests gathered on an early spring evening for a glass of wine, then adjourned to the main studio, with its ceiling-high windows looking out over the garden, to hear an hour-long recital by four singers who have received Trust awards.

Baritone Viktor Rud opened the programme with some Mozart followed by soprano Renae Martin with Handel, Mozart and Meyerbeer. Baritone Krzysztof Szumanski gave us more Mozart, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff, and finally Siphiwo Ntshebe sang Strauss, Verdi, Puccini and Lehar. All were beautifully accompanied by Louisa Ridgway on piano.

After a delightful supper the evening ended with many guests asking: “When’s the next one?” Our thanks to artistes Viktor, Renae, Krzysztof, Siphiwo and Louisa as well as to Pat Syme and her team for providing the supper. Special thanks too to Jane Craxton for use of the studios.

November 2005: Siphiwo Ntshebe, a 21-year-old South African tenor, has been chosen to receive the 2005 Simon Fletcher Charitable Trust’s £1,000 award.

Siphiwo, from Cape Town, is a postgraduate student at the Royal College of Music in London

An additional award of £250 has been made to Krzysztof Szumanski, a 29-year-old Polish baritone at the National Opera Studio.

March 2005: £1,000 AWARD TO SINGER RENAE

Mezzo-soprano Renae Martin has been chosen to receive the Simon Fletcher Charitable Trust’s £1,000 award for 2004/5.

The 29-year-old singer from Perth, West Australia, is in her final year at the Sydney Conservatorium before moving to Europe.

Renae is from a musical family. Her brother Bradley is music professor at the University of North Carolina. Her late mother, who coached children’s choirs, had the maiden name Beecham and counted the conductor Sir Thomas among her forbears.

For a fuller story about Renae click here.

Jan 05: The Simon Fletcher Charitable Trust has made an award of £799 to Failsworth School, Manchester, towards the purchase of computer hardware for use in the music department. Later in 2005, the school went on to achieve its best ever GCSE results, performing particularly well in music, with 83% of candidates achieving grade C or above.

July 2004: LOVE ON A SUMMER’S NIGHT

Tuesday June 15 2004 at St John’s, Smith Square, SW1

When all the elements of perfect summer weather combine, a June evening in London is to be treasured, and this was one of them. As the audience took their places for the first concert presented by the Trust, sunlight streamed through the tall windows of St. John’s, Smith Square, almost as a reminder of why this airy hall is not only regarded as one of London’s major concert venues, but also as one of the masterpieces of English Baroque architecture.

But if the setting was remarkable, the music was even more so. Six singers gave one of those truly moving performances that lives on in the memory. The songs covered an eclectic range of music by Handel, Puccini, Rossini, Tchaikovsky, Verdi, Offenbach, Mozart, Bizet, Wagner and Lehar, all of it enriched by the magical playing of pianist John Reid.

Five of the singers - soprano Cheryl Barker, tenor Julian Gavin, baritone Peter Coleman-Wright (the Australian contingent), contralto Hilary Summers and baritone Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts were friends or colleagues of Simon’s. The sixth was our first award winner, baritone Viktor Rud, making his London debut. All gave their services gratis, for which we are truly grateful.

As one of our main aims in presenting the concert was to make ourselves better known, we were delighted to see not only many of our established supporters in the audience but also others who were simply attracted by the programme and went away knowing more about the Simon Fletcher Charitable Trust. These included Lord and Lady Harewood, both of whom are forces in the world of opera.

As the applause rang out at the end of the concert, singers and pianist were presented with bouquets of flowers and bottles of champagne. Later, in the crypt of St. John’s, they joined the Trustees and many members of the audience for a glass of wine.

Everyone, singers and audience alike, deserve our special thanks. Truly, a night to remember.

January 2004: The trustees of the Simon Fletcher Charitable Trust are delighted to announce that its first annual award of £1,000 has been made to Viktor Rud, a 23-year-old baritone studying at the Royal Academy of Music in London.

Ukranian-born Viktor, who is taking a postgraduate diploma course and will shortly transfer to the Academy’s two-year opera course, was chosen from more than 50 highly talented applicants from music colleges all over Britain.

A full biography of Viktor can be read here.

June 2003: The Fletcher family has placed a memorial bench for Simon in Tavistock Square, Bloomsbury, London, an oasis of trees, flowerbeds and lawns through which he walked daily from his home to work at the English National Opera.

The oak bench bears a silver plaque with the words:

Simon Fletcher

1964 - 2000

The music goes on

It was dedicated in March, 2003, at a gathering of about 30 of Simon's friends and family.

After a ribbon-cutting ceremony performed by Simon's five-year-old niece Myrtle, his life was toasted in bubbly kindly provided by his long-time friend Chris Loake and wife Francesca Ayers.

Situated nearest to the statue of Mahatma Ghandi in the centre of the square, Simon's bench is now a resting point for office workers eating lunchtime sandwiches, elderly gentlemen reading the daily newspaper and families enjoying picnics.