My Father Cannot Speak
Creative Team
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BEN PARRY - COMPOSER
Ben has a busy career as a composer, conductor, singer, arranger and music producer. His compositions and arrangements include a burgeoning catalogue of choral music for Peters Edition, Faber Music, Stainer & Bell and Oxford University Press. With Garth Bardsley he has written over 50 works, including choral music, song cycles, theatre music, Christmas songs and half a musical! He has enjoyed commissions from, amongst others, the Cathedral Choral Society, Washington DC, The National Youth Choir of Great Britain, Continuum Choir, St John’s College, Cambridge, BBC Singers, Chelmsford, Ely, Norwich and Worcester cathedrals, and his music has been heard at the BBC Proms and regularly on TV and radio. He is also a house composer for the UK music production companies Audio Network and MediaTracks. Ben features on the credits of well over 300 recordings, broadcasts and film soundtracks.
He has held directorial posts with a number of prestigious organisations, including St Paul's School, London (Director of Music 2003-2208), The Royal Academy of Music Junior Deprartment (Director 2009-2014), King's College, Cambridge (Assistant Director of Music 2013, 2021), the National Youth Choir (Artistic Director & Principal Conductor 2012-2023) and the professional choir London Voices (Director 2004-).
Ben studied Music and History of Art at Cambridge University, where he was a member of King’s College Choir. In the mid-1980s he joined The Swingle Singers with whom he toured globally and performed with some of the world’s greatest musicians including Stephane Grappelli, Pierre Boulez and Dizzy Gillespie. Moving to Edinburgh in 1995, he co-founded the Dunedin Consort, which has gone on to establish itself as Scotland’s premiere Baroque ensemble. He moved back to England in 2003. As director of London Voices he has performed in major concert houses around the world as well as conducting well over 200 major film and game soundtracks including The Hunger Games, Harry Potter, The Hobbit and Avengers.
As an orchestral conductor he has worked with the Academy of Ancient Music, Britten Sinfonia, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, London Mozart Players, Seville Royal Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony, London Philharmonic and BBC Concert Orchestras.
GARTH BARDSLEY - LIBRETTIST
Award-winning opera director Garth Bardlsey studied at St John's College, Cambridge and at the Royal Northern College of Music. He has produced for numerous leading conservatoires and international festivals; his production of Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream won the Manchester Theatre Award Best Opera 2016. He made his operatic debut with the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company and was a soloist for various opera companies and festivals. He has extensive experience in musical theatre and starred in the West End productions of Jerry Herman’s The Best of Times, as the Phantom in The Phantom of the Opera and created the role of Tony in Paul Webb's critically acclaimed one-man play, The Lodger. He has recently appeared in Ruth the Musical at Wilton’s Music Hall and Lions VS Elephants at Manchester’s Edge Theatre. His first book, Stop the World - The Biography of Anthony Newley (Oberon Books) - was serialised in The Daily Mail, and garnered 5* reviews from the national press. He has written several plays , three ballets and a 90’ radio drama Jubilee! broadcast on BBC Radio 3 starring Sam West, Simon Callow and Sophia Nomvete and directed by Andy Jordan. As a poet and lyricist, he has enjoyed a long collaboration with composer Ben Parry. Their numerous choral and solo works have been performed and broadcast across the UK, Europe and America including the Royal Albert Hall, Carols from Kings (BBC2), Sage Gateshead, Washington DC’s National Cathedral and The Kennedy Center. Their Christmas pop song, I Wrote You a Christmas Love Song has been recorded by the Royal Air Force Central Band and the National Youth Choir and was broadcast worldwide in December 2019. In 2023 they released a Christmas album, Winter Warmers with Audio Network. Garth also writes with award-winning American composer Gregory Wanamaker and in 2016 their choral work, Laude!, was broadcast on PBS across America and Canada. Garth created A Christmas Conversation for the renowned choral ensemble Tenebrae, which was performed around the UK and in London at the Wigmore Hall and St Martin-in-the-fields featuring Clive Mantle as the actor.
Garth has been a director and lecturer in opera studies and performance practice at leading conservatoires including the Royal Northern College of Music, the Royal College of Music, Royal Academy of Music, The Crane School of Music, New York and at New York University where he was Director of Opera and Musical Theatre. Garth was also a senior lecturer at University of Plymouth.
RODERICK WILLIAMS - SINGER
Roderick Williams is one of the most sought after baritones of his generation and performs a wide repertoire from baroque to contemporary music in the opera house, on the concert platform and in recital.
He enjoys relationships with all the major UK opera houses and has sung world premieres of operas by, among others, David Sawer, Sally Beamish, Michel van der Aa, Robert Saxton and Alexander Knaifel. He performs regularly with all the BBC orchestras, and many other ensembles including the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Philharmonia, London Sinfonietta, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, the Hallé, Britten Sinfonia, Bournemouth Symphony and Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Abroad Roderick has worked with the Berlin Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Russian National Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Ensemble Orchestral de Paris, Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome and Bach Collegium Japan amongst others. His many festival appearances include the BBC Proms (including the Last Night in 2014), Edinburgh, Cheltenham, Bath, Aldeburgh and Melbourne Festivals. He is also an accomplished recital artist who can be heard at venues and festivals including Wigmore Hall where he has performed all three Schubert cycles, Kings Place, LSO St Luke’s, the Perth Concert Hall, Oxford Lieder Festival, London Song Festival, Beethovenhaus, Snape Maltings, Edinburgh Festival, Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, Concertgebouw and the Musikverein, Vienna. He appears regularly on Radio 3 both as a performer and a presenter. His numerous recordings include Vaughan Williams, Berkeley and Britten operas for Chandos and an extensive repertoire of English song with pianist Iain Burnside for Naxos. He has recorded the three Schubert cycles for Chandos, an award winning disc of French song with Roger Vignoles for Champs Hill and was a soloist in the award winning recording of Delius’ Mass of Life with the Bergen Philharmonic / Sir Mark Elder. Roderick Williams is also a composer and has had works premiered at the Wigmore and Barbican Halls, the Purcell Room, with the Rias Kammerchor and live on national radio. From 2022/23 season he takes the position of Composer in Association of the BBC Singers He was Artist in Residence at the 2023 Aldeburgh Festival, Artist in Residence for the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra between 2020-22 and Artist in Residence at the Swaledale Festival in 2026. He was awarded an OBE for services to music in June 2017 and sang at the Coronation Service of King Charles III in May 2023 and also composed a choral work for the event.