Cardiff music students on BBC TV
September 2008
Students are seldom idle during the summer vacation, and this year has been notable for the appearance of a number of the School of Music's current and former students on BBC Television.
On Saturday 23 August 2008, broadcast live on BBC2, the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain gave its annual concert at the BBC Proms in the Royal Albert Hall, conducted by the music director of the Royal Opera House, Antonio Pappano. Prominent in the percussion was Gareth Ceredig, now about to go into his second year at Cardiff. He showed his versatility by playing snare drum in Varese's Amériques, timpani in Rachmaninov's Fourth Piano Concerto, and cymbals in Copland's Third Symphony. You can see and hear Gareth Ceredig as the soloist in Milhaud's Concerto for Marimba and Vibraphone in the School of Music's Christmas concert on 11 December at Cardiff's City Hall.
A week after the NYO's concert in London, those following the BBC's choral competition 'Last Choir Standing' on BBC1 will have seen an all-Welsh final on 30 August in which the 18-strong Cardiff-based Only Men Aloud triumphed. Congratulations in particular go to four of the performers: All Men Aloud's founder-director Tim Rhys-Evans and singers Nick Bristow and Andrew Mulligan, all of whom are Cardiff University music alumni. The fourth member with Cardiff University connections is the newest recruit to Only Men Aloud, Paul Rothwell, now going into his second year of studies in the School of Music. Their next major TV appearance will be at the 2008 Royal Variety Performance in December.
Closer to home, some of our 2008 music graduates - Emma
Height, Ailsa Hughes and William
Rees - and current students - Rhian
Humphreys (going into Year 3) and Rachel
Williams (going into Year
2) - were spotted on BBC1 on 13 September singing in the BBC National
Chorus of Wales in the Swansea 'Proms in the Park' concert as part
of the Last Night of the BBC Proms.