Biographies (2)

As soloist in Oswestry Sinfonia’s Mid-Summer Concert in 2002, Carolyn Chadwick performed a work that formed an appropriate centrepiece: “Nuits d’été” (Summer Nights) by Berlioz. This is a work based on six love poems by Théophile Gautier, mostly orchestrated in 1856.
Since graduating from the University of Birmingham where she was awarded both the Undergraduate and Postgraduate Barber Scholarships for performance, Carolyn Chadwick has built her career specialising in the recital and oratorio repertoire. She continued her studies with Margaret Thomas at the Birmingham Conservatoire of Music, where she took part in Master Classes with Graham Johnson and Roger Vignoles. More recently she has studied Melodies and Lieder with Malcolm Martineau, and Mozart opera with conductor James Lockhart. She is currently a pupil of Paul Farrington.
Recent oratorio performances have included Handel's Messiah, Haydn's Creation, Bach's St. John Passion, Dvorak's Stabat Mater, Mozart's Requiem, Elgar's Spirit of England and Mendelssohn's Elijah.

Mel McIntyre is a 46-year-old Canadian-born musician and composer. He came to the UK in 1983, teaching music both in and out of schools.
Presently he works as a peripatetic music teacher, giving instruction on piano, keyboard and guitar. He has also recently founded the Music for Pleasure Saturday morning music school at The Lakelands School in Ellesmere.
The Missa Brevis was initially sketched in 1983, but it took another 20 years before the work was completed. In contrast, the composer wrote his Three Tableaux for Orchestra in about six weeks in the autumn of 2003. He says that technology has made it possible to work faster and more accurately then ever before, giving composers more time to be creative.

Michael Sheehan (b.1950), was inspired to learn the French Horn by hearing the celebrated recording of the late Dennis Brain playing the Mozart concertos. He recalls that the greater part of his Grade 8 examination was actually taken up in a discussion and reminiscence of Dennis Brain by the lady examiner who was a soprano soloist and had been a close friend!

Having begun a lifelong obsession with music as a boy chorister, Michael’s studies continued at Edinburgh University where he was a lay-clerk in the choir of St Mary’s Cathedral.
As a member of the Galpin Society, he helped Jeremy Montagu set up the permanent exhibition of historical musical instruments in the Reid School of Music, and he became the last disciple of the author, musicologist and horn player Reginald Morley-Pegge (d.1972) who was trained at the Paris Conservatoire.

A versatile lyric soprano, who adapts happily to different musical and linguistic styles, and a keen communicator, she is much in demand as a recitalist. As a result, she has performed in the Cheltenham International Festival of Music, The Three Choirs Festival, and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, as well as in many other venues locally and further afield.
She has premiered several new compositions, including the first orchestral performance of Paul Paterson's Millennium Mass, and a work written for her by Bulgarian composer Georgi Minchev, which she performed first in Edinburgh, and later in Sofia, as part of a recital recorded for Bulgarian Radio. She has performed with several Early Music groups, including the Borromini Ensemble, and Ex Cathedra Chamber Choir, with whom she recorded both for BBC Radio 3 and 4, and on CD. More recently, she performed with the Northern Chamber Orchestra.
Locally, she has enjoyed many happy collaborations with the highly regarded pianist Christopher Symons and is looking forward to working with him again in the near future on a performance of works by Oswestry composer Margaret Wegener.