John Owen-Jones joined the line-up for The Singers Soiree at the St Giles-in-the-Fields Church, London
The Singers Soiree is a series of charity concerts founded by enterprising and compassionate young director Jamie Chapman Dixon. The events raise funds for Shooting Star CHASE, a charity that supports families with terminally ill children and helps them to enjoy and be looked after in the last few months/years of their lives. The Soirée has been performed five times on the floating venue, The Battersea Barge. Such has been its success, that Dixon recently took the great leap of faith and transferred the show from a 60-seat venue to the 700-seater space in the beautiful St Giles-in-the-Fields church in the heart of London’s West End. He needn’t have worried – the house was packed.
Part of the Soirée’s remit is to bring students and professional performers together, to learn from one another and forge links. Amongst many others, the pros on this occasion included the Strallen sisters Summer and Sasi, John Barr and John Owen-Jones. Some sang in duets, including with students, and Sophie-Louise Dann and the chorus of the musical Molly Wobbly’s Tit Factory (running at the Hackney Empire from 20 September–5 October) offered us a couple of numbers too.
Performances that particularly made an impression on me were Nathan James rocking the place with his signature heavy metal, newcomer to the scene, singer Natalie Gray, who is soon to work in LA, and recent post-graduate from Rose Bruford College, Ciaran O’Driscoll. His resonant deep bass voice is a rich delight.
The evening featured a variety of material, mostly musical theatre, but also rock, swing and gospel. The cast and choir were accompanied by a six-part orchestra and piano, under the directorship of Barney Ashworth, with some excellent arrangements from Matt Abrams, Benjamin Holder, Terence Penk and Joe Louis Robinson.
All artists and creatives gave their services for free. As is often the way with concerts like these, what with a silent auction and raffles and so on, the evening went on too long, which is something Dixon will doubtless address for future performances, now that he is confident of attracting a large crowd. Still, the audience cheered and toe-tapped along and left smiling.
I hope, and trust, they made a ton of money.
Fiona-Jane Weston
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