Biography
SIMON WALL held a choral scholarship at St John’s College, Cambridge, before taking up a scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music in London. He currently combines his solo career with his position as Lay Vicar here at Westminster Abbey and as a member of The Tallis Scholars with whom he has sung over 650 concerts.
Operas include Monteverdi’s Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda in Venice with Monteverdi String Band, ’Sacrifices’ – Carissimi Jepthe and Charpentier Sacrificium Abrahae, at the Spitalfields Festival with La Nuova Musica; Orfeo and Fairy Queen with Emmanuel Haim, both for Opera de Lille and Opera du Rhin. His Temple Festival Dido and Aeneas Sailor saw Andrew Porter/The Times describing him as ‘a model of unforced, attractively direct English singing’.
Recordings include Barber’s operetta A Hand of Bridge, conducted by Marin Alsop, with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Tavener’s Veil of the Temple, directed by Stephen Layton, Charles Wood’s St Mark Passion (Evangelist) with the choir of Jesus College, Cambridge, Monteverdi Vespers with The Rodolfus Choir and Lamenti with Emmanuelle Haïm and Le Concert d’Astrée. Recent releases include a disc of Telemann, Bach and Graupner with The Bach Players, Dixit Dominus by Handel and Vivaldi and the ‘Sacrifices’ programme with la Nuova Musica, directed by David Bates and a cameo role in James McVinnie’s Cycles disc of organ music by Nico Muhly.
Concert performances include the Gilles Requiem at Dartington for Andrew Parrott; a John McCabe premiere at the Three Choirs Festival and for BBC Radio 3; a BBC Chamber Prom with Iestyn Davis, Richard Egarr and AAM; the St Matthew Passion Evangelist at Snape Maltings for Mazaaki Suzuki and in King’s College Chapel with King’s College Choir and Stephen Cleobury; various Handel Arias with Haydn’s Nelson Mass at Snape Maltings with Trinity College Choir, the CLS and Stephen Layton and Damon in Acis and Galatea for the Gabrieli Consort and La Nuova Musica. In 2003 he premiered solos in John Tavener’s epic The Veil of the Temple, at both the Lincoln Center, New York and at the BBC Proms. He has appeared as a soloist for Laurence Cummings, John Eliot Gardiner, Richard Hickox, Stephen Layton, Paul McCreesh, John Rutter, and the late Sir David Willcocks.
