Ruby Hughes & Huw Watkins
Biography Ruby Hughes & Huw Watkins
Ruby Hughes
is a former BBC New Generation Artist and was winner of both First Prize and the Audience Prize at the 2009 London Handel Singing Competition. She holds a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award and was Shortlisted for a 2014 Royal Philharmonic Society Music Award.
She has become known for her interpretations of the music of the baroque and 20th and 21st Century, performed at every turn with a unique sensitivity and artistry. On the opera stage she has sung productions for >span class="s11"> an der Wein (Roggiero in Rossini's Tancredi, and Fortuna in L’Incoronazione di Poppea), Aix-en-Provence Festival (EuridiceL'Orfeo), Opéra de Toulon (Rose Maurrant Street Scene) and Potsdamer Winteroper (title role, >span class="s11">) and in the UK has performed major roles with English National Opera, Garsington Opera and for Scottish Opera.
Ruby works regularly with conductors including Rinaldo Allesandrini, Ivor Bolton, Laurence Cummings, Thierry Fischer, Pablo Heras Casado, Rene Jacobs, Juanjo Mena, Gianandrea Noseda, Marc Minkowski, HervéNiquet, Thomas Søndergård, John Storgårds, and Osmo Vänskä.
She is a passionate programmer, curator and collaborator and has forged particularly close relationships with Mime Brinkmann and Jonas Nordberg (baroque trio), Laurence Cummings, Joseph Middleton, Natalie Clein and Julius Drake, Huw Watkins, United Strings of Europe and >span class="s11">.
Her captivating communication with the audience has resulted in invitations to give recitals at Wigmore Hall, Muziekcentrum De Bijloke, Gent, Kings Place, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Schloss Elmau, Vienna Konzerthaus, LSO St Luke’s and in the US at both the Frick Collection and Carnegie Hall, New York. Festival appearances have included the BBC Proms, Cheltenham, Edinburgh International, Newbury, Aldeburgh Festival, La Folle Journée, Gent Festival OdeGand, Göttingen, Marlboro, Spitalfields and Beaune and Namur.
She has built up an impressive discography including a solo recital recording for Champs Hill records and a disc for Chandos Records with Laurence Cummings and the OAE in tribute to Giulia Frasi, Handel’s lyric muse. For the BIS label she has recorded "Heroines of Love and Loss", which is dedicated to 17th century women composers and was released to huge critical acclaim including a Diapason d’or award, a highly praised album of works by Mahler, Berg and Rhian Samuel, "Clytemnestra",together with BBCNOW, which was nominated for a Gramophone Award. She has recorded Mahler Symphony No. 2 with the Minnesota Symphony under Osmo Vänskä, a solo recital disc with Joseph Middleton titled "Songs for New Life and Love" including works by Mahler, Ives and Helen Grime and most recently a programme with United Strings of Europe including Golijov’s Three Songs for Soprano and String Orchestra. Future recording projects for BIS include a baroque disc with Mime Brinkmann and Jonas Nordberg, and two recordings with Manchester Collective to include commissions by Edmund Finnis and Deborah
Pritchard as well as Britten’s Les Illuminations, a programme which they performed together in a UK tour to great critical acclaim.
Ruby’s passion for performing new repertoire and has also led to her becoming a champion of female composers having had many commissions written for her including those by Helen Grime, Deborah Pritchard Judith Weir and Errolyn Wallen.
Highlights for Ruby’s upcoming season include concerts with Bach Collegium Japan, performing Bach’s Matthew Passion under Masaaki Suzuki, Orchestre d’Auvergne (Britten’s Les Illuminations), ResidenteOrchestra (Ruckert Lieder), Orchestre National de Lille (Mozart Great Mass in C), Potsdam Kammerakademie, Aarhus Symfoniorkester and recitals at WIgmore Hall and LSO St Luke’s. 22/23 will also see the release of the disk ECHO with Huw Watkins, released on the BIS label.
Huw Watkins
was born in Wales in 1976. He studied piano with Peter Lawson at Chetham’s School of Music and composition with Robin Holloway, Alexander Goehr and Julian Anderson at Cambridge and the Royal College of Music. In 2001 he was awarded the Constant and Kit Lambert Junior Fellowship at the Royal College of Music, he now teaches composition at the Royal Academy of Music.
As a pianist, Huw Watkins is in great demand with orchestras and festivals including the London Sinfonietta, Britten Sinfonia, the BBC orchestras and Aldeburgh and Cheltenham Festivals. He has performed globally at concert halls including at the Barbican, the Wigmore Hall, the Library of Congress in Washington and the Smithsonian Institute. Strongly committed to the performance of new music, Huw has given premieres of works by Alexander Goehr, Tansy Davies, Michael Zev Gordon and Mark-Anthony Turnage. He recently presented a programme of Hans Werner Henze’s piano works at the BBC’s Total Immersion day at the Barbican. UK recent appearances include Newbury and Peasmarsh Festivals, Wigmore Hall, Eaton Square, Kettle’s Yard Cambridge, Saffron Walden, Glasgow, Bath. Further afield, Ferrara, Columbus (USA) with ProMusica Chamber Orchestra, Domaine Forget and Toronto Summer Music Festival.
A favourite partner for chamber collaborations, Huw Watkins performs regularly with his brother Paul Watkins, as well as Alina Ibragimova, James Gilchrist, Daniel Hope, Nicholas Daniel, Sebastian Manz, Mark Padmore, Carolyn Sampson, and Alexandra Wood. Recently Huw has featured as both Composer in Residence and pianist at festivals including Presteigne and Lars Vogt’s ‘Spannungen’ Festival in Heimbach, Germany, as well as with the Orchestra of the Swan (2012–14).
Huw Watkins is one of Britain’s foremost composers and his music has been performed throughout Europe and North America. Huw’s works have been performed and commissioned by the Nash Ensemble, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, Belcea Quartet, Elias Quartet, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, BBC Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra and Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra. Highlights include his acclaimed Violin Concerto premiered at the BBC Proms by Alina Ibragimova and the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Edward Gardner, Piano Concerto premiered by BBC NOW, London Concerto premiered to mark the London Symphony Orchestra’s centenary, Double Concerto premiered at the BBC Proms with BBC NOW conducted by Jac van Steen and In My Craft or Sullen Art for tenor and string quartet premiered at the Wigmore Hall by Mark Padmore and the Petersen Quartet.
Huw has been named as Composer-in-Association with BBC NOW for three years, starting in the Autumn of 2015.
Huw Watkins is regularly featured on BBC Radio 3, both as a performer and as a composer. His recordings include a disc of Mendelssohn’s cello and piano works with his brother Paul Watkins (Chandos), British sonatas for cello and piano with Paul Watkins (Nimbus), Alexander Goehr’s piano cycle ‘Symmetry Disorders Reach’ (Wergo), and Thomas Adès’ song cycle ‘The Lover in Winter’ with the countertenor Robin Blaze (EMI Classics). Most recently, NMC Records have released a disc dedicated to Huw Watkins’ work entitled ‘In my craft of sullen art’ (NMC). The disc showcases Huw’s ‘outstanding pianism’ (Andrew Clements, The Guardian) and reveals him as ‘one of the most rounded composer-musicians in the UK’ (Andrew Clark, Financial Times).
