Martin Bussey & Marcus Farnsworth
Biography Martin Bussey & Marcus Farnsworth
Marcus Farnsworth
is a past first prize-winner of the Wigmore Hall/Kohn Foundation International Song Competition and has performed many times at Wigmore Hall. He has also appeared in recital at the Concertgebouw Amsterdam and La Monnaie, Brussels with Julius Drake; on a UK tour of Schubert Winterreise with James Baillieu; for Leeds Lieder with Graham Johnson; at Snape Maltings with Malcolm Martineau and the Fundacion Juan March Madrid with Sholto Kynoch.
His regular appearances for English National Opera feature Guglielmo Così fan tutte, Bill Bobstay in HMS Pinafore, Strephon Iolanthe, and Noye Noye’s Fludde in a collaboration with Theatre Royal Stratford East.
Current and recent highlights include Uprising a new opera by Jonathan Dove performed at Saffron Hall and with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra; The Traveller in Britten’s Curlew River at the Aldeburgh Festival staged by Deborah Warner and his Canticles in concert with Julius Drake and Dame Harriet Walter for Temple Music; his debut at Garsington Opera singing Harlequin in Ariadne auf Naxos; orchestrated Schubert songs with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra; appearances at the Three Choirs Festival and European tours of Purcell King Arthur with the Gabrieli Consort and The Fairy Queen with Vox Luminis.
He has also sung Candide with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Marin Alsop; Maxwell Davies Eight Songs for a Mad King at the BBC Proms with the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group conducted by Sian Edwards; HK Gruber’s Frankenstein!! with the Aurora Orchestra and Nicholas Collon in Cologne and roles in Kurt Weill Street Scene at Teatro Real Madrid.
Other previous operatic roles have included Eddy in Turnage Greek for Boston Lyric Opera; Sid in Britten’s Albert Herring with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and Ned Keene Peter Grimes at the Edinburgh International Festival with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Edward Gardner.
As well as many new works, including Colin Matthews The Great Journey; Turnage The Silver Tassie; Cheryl Hoad’s Last Man Standing and Hubbard in John Adams’ Doctor Atomic conducted by the composer with the BBC SO, Marcus’s expansive concert repertoire includes Britten War Requiem; Elgar The Apostles; Orff Carmina Burana; Berlioz L’enfance du Christ and the Brahms and Fauré Requiem with conductors including François-Xavier Roth, Paul McCreesh and Bernard Labadie.
He has also sung Bach St Matthew Passion and St John Passion (Christus and Arias) with many symphony and period orchestras, most recently with Antwerp Symphony Orchestra and the Gabrieli Consort.
Marcus is the Founder and Artistic Director of the Southwell Music Festival.
Alison Rose
is the winner of the 2015 Maggie Teyte Prize and a 2017 Leonard Ingrams Award. She is a graduate of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the National Opera Studio, and is an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music.
Operatic roles include; Papagena, Die Zauberflöte (Glyndebourne Festival Opera); Barbarina, Le nozze di Figaro (Garsington Festival Opera & English National Opera); Governess,The Turn of the Screw (Bury Court Opera); Vixen, The Cunning Little Vixen (Grimeborn Festival / Arcola Theatre); Lady in Waiting, Gloriana (St Endellion Festival with Martyn Brabbins); Miranda, Arnold's The Dancing Master (GSMD); Bětuška, Dvořák’s The Cunning Peasant (GSMD); Servilia, La Clemenza di Tito (RNCM).
Concert highlights include Vaughan Williams’ Serenade to Music at the BBC Last Night of the Proms, Handel’s Messiah at the Royal Albert Hall, Britten’s Les Illuminations at the Southwell Music Festival and solo recitals at the Oxford Lieder Festival and the Royal Opera House Crush Room.
Recent highlights include her debut with Glyndebourne Festival Opera as Papagena in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, Mahler’s Symphony no.4 at the Southwell Music Festival and Britten’s Les Illuminations with Sian Edwards for the Lewes Festival of Song. Further performances include her debut with Opera North on their Whistle Stop Opera tour, and a return to ENO for a Studio Live production of Judith Weir’s Blonde Eckbert.
Alison continues her studies in London with Gary Coward.
