Marjorie bach biography lesson

The English contralto, Marjorie Thomas, was born in Sunderland, England. Her father was a Welsh tenor, and her mother, an amateur pianist, was Scottish. When she was two years old, her family moved to Oldham, Lancashire. She was educated at the Hulme Grammar School for Girls, then the Manchester High School for Girls from 1934 to 1939 and became a member of the choir at St Paul's Church in Oldham. She studied piano with her mother beginning at age 5, and later with William Walton's brother Noel. In 1940, at the age of 17, she won a scholarship to the Royal Manchester College of Music to study piano. There, in her second term, she began to study singing with Elsie Thurston, which became her principal study, graduating in 1944. After this, she taught music for a year at Stockport Convent High School for Girls.

After World War II, Marjorie Thomas' warm, enveloping, lyrical contralto voice graced the opera house and the concert platform in England for almost three decades. In 1945, she debuted with the Hallé Orchestra under conductor John Barbirolli, in Edward Elgar's Sea P

Performance Highlights include:

  • Premiering the role of the Light Moon in The Lesson of Da Ji (Alice Ho and Marjorie Chan) with Toronto Masque Theatre.

  • Mabel in The Pirates of Penzance (Gilbert and Sullivan) with Toronto Operetta Theatre.

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  • Cunegonde in Candide (Bernstein) with Toronto Operetta Theatre, and in concert with the Grand Philharmonic Choir (Kitchener, Ontario, Canada).  

  • Cleopatra in Giulio Cesare (Handel) with Halifax Summer Opera Festival (Nova Scotia, Canada).

  • Olympia in Les Contes D’Hoffmann (Offenbach) with Summer Opera Lyric Theatre (Toronto, Canada).

 

  • Madame Herz in The Impresario (Mozart) with Voicebox: Opera in Concert (Toronto, Canada).

  • The Ad Exec in Airline Icarus (Brian Current) with Soundstreams (Toronto, Canada).

  • Soprano soloist in The Little Match Girl Passion (David Lange) and I Think We are Angels (James Rolfe) with Soundstreams. ​

  • Soprano soloist in Carmina Burana (Carl Orff) with Chorus Hamilton (Hamilton, ON, Canada). 

  • Gretel in Hansel and Gretel (H

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    Chamber music, Solo music, Orchestral Music, Piano music, Instrumental music

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    Brian Buch teaches at Berklee College of Music, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the New England Conservatory School of Music’s School of Continuing Education. He also privately teaches composition, classical and jazz piano. As a composer, he writes for all genres of classical music from orchestral to chamber and solo instruments and is a founding member of the International Cat Murr Composer's Society. Brian received his Doctorate in Music Composition from Boston University and his Bachelor of Music degree in Music Composition with an emphasis in Piano Performance from the

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