New Appointments in Music
In preparation for the introduction of a range of new training
opportunities and the launch of world-class training and
performance facilities, the Royal Welsh College is delighted to
announce two significant new appointments to its staff:
Meyrick Alexander will join the College as
Head of Woodwind, and Vivien Care
has been appointed Course Leader, Musical
Theatre.
‘These are both very exciting appointments for
the College and I’m delighted that Meyrick and Vivien already have
strong roots in Wales,’ said Hilary Boulding, College
Principal. ‘Both Vivien and Meyrick have distinguished careers
as performers which will be invaluable for our students.
Meyrick Alexander has held the position of Principal Bassoon
since 1980 in the Philharmonia Orchestra before which he was a
member of several leading orchestras including the BBC Northern
Symphony Orchestra and the Northern Sinfonia. He is also Principal
Bassoon of the London Chamber Orchestra and has played period
instruments with John Eliot Gardiner’s Orchestre Revolutionnaire et
Romantique and is a regular guest principal with the Orchestra of
the Age of Enlightenment.
He has performed extensively as a chamber musician and as a
guest with nearly every British symphony and chamber orchestra, and
is also a regular soloist at the annual International Double Reed
Conference in the USA, Australia and the UK. In contemporary music,
he is the dedicatee of a number of solo works and has performed
with the London Sinfonietta. He has been a member of staff at three
conservatoires (the Guildhall, Birmingham Conservatoire and the
RNCM) and regularly gives masterclasses and recitals at all the
other major colleges in Britain and several in Europe, Australia,
USA and the Far East. He has also served on the jury on two major
international competitions.
Vivien Care will oversee the audition process for the new
MA Musical Theatre course, which starts
in September. This new course is part of a suite of new Master
programmes, developed for professionals within the performing arts
and creative industries.
Born and educated in Wales, Vivien initially trained at the
Welsh College of Music and Drama, continuing her studies on the
postgraduate Musical Theatre Course at the Royal Academy of Music,
graduating with distinction and receiving the prestigious Mary
Hammond Prize. Since then she has sustained a busy and varied
career in Musical Theatre - in prominent roles in large-scale West
End musicals as well as in small-scale and fringe productions,
session work and radio broadcasts. She is also much in demand as a
vocal consultant and coach. She can currently be seen as Sister
Margaretta in The Sound of Music.
Vivien’s experience as a performer and teacher, together with
extensive industry links have done much to inform an approach to
the training of musical theatre practitioners at the highest level,
based on a thorough awareness of the interdependent disciplines of
acting, singing and dance.