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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.  He is Principal Conductor of the National Youth Choir and Director of the professional choir London Voices.  He 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 and has since held various prestigious directorial posts at St. Paul’s School, London, Junior Royal Academy of Music, King’s College Cambridge (as Assistant Director of Music), Aldeburgh Festival and subsequently in his current position with the National Youth Choir.

As director of London Voices he has performed in major concert houses around the world as well as conducting many 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.

Ben’s own compositions and arrangements include a burgeoning catalogue of choral music for Peters Edition 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, among others, the Cathedral Choral Society, Washington DC, The National Youth Choir of Great Britain, 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 company Audio Network. Ben features on the credits of well over 300 recordings, broadcasts and film soundtracks.

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GARTH BARDSLEY - LIBRETTIST

An award-winning opera director, Garth studied at St John's College, Cambridge, and at the Royal Northern College of Music. Garth 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 he created the role of Tony in Paul Webb's critically acclaimed one-man play, The Lodger. 

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 and, as a poet and lyricist, has enjoyed a long collaboration with composer Ben Parry. Their numerous works have been performed and broadcast across the UK and America including the RAH, Christmas at Kings, 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 Big Band and the National Youth Choir of Great Britain and was broadcast worldwide in December 2019. This year they released a Christmas album, Winter Warmers. 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. Together they are working on a chamber opera and a song cycle. Garth has written three ballets and is currently working on a Christmas project with the renowned choral ensemble, Tenebrae.  

Garth has been a senior lecturer in opera studies and performance practice at the Royal Northern College of Music. He has taught at the RCM, RAM, East 15, Crane School of Music in New York State and Guildford School of Acting. He has recently returned from a year’s Visiting Associate Professorship at New York University in Manhattan where he was Director of Opera and Musical Theatre. Garth joined the University of Plymouth in September 2021.  

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