Sydney-born Vivien Conacher trained on ENO OperaWorks and holds a Masters of Vocal Performance with Distinction from the Royal College of Music.
A versatile stage performer, Vivien’s recent roles include Fidalma Il Matrimonio Segreto (UK Tour for Pop-Up Opera), Rivka Fiddler on the Roof (Grange Park Opera and BBC Proms), Sorceress Dido and Aenaes (Bowes Muesum), Filippyevna Eugene Onegin (Bloomsbury Opera, and cover for Grange Park Opera), Hortense Koanga by Delius (Wexford Festival Opera), and Penelope (cover) Il Ritorno di Ulisse in Patria (Iford Arts Festival). She has also performed in Opera Australia‘s award-winning chorus, in both the 2015 and 2016 summer seasons.
Vivien is an alumna of the Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme, British Youth Opera, and the Oxford Lieder Festival Mastercourse with Roger Vignoles. She is a Concordia Foundation Artist, a Tait Memorial Trust Awardee, and was selected as a finalist in the British Song Prize at London Song Festival late last year.
An avid performer of art song and concert repertoire, Vivien has recently appeared as a soloist for Iford Arts Festival, Battle Choral Society, and also at the Bloomsbury Festival, where her original stage show Moonstricken (combining staged art song performance with poetry readings and light/sound design) premiered last year. In her hometown of Sydney, she has performed in concerts for Pacific Opera and the Joan Sutherland & Richard Bonynge Foundation and has also appeared in prestigious UK concert venues including the Royal Albert Hall, St-Martin-in-the-Fields, Leighton House, the Foundling Museum, and St Paul’s Covent Garden.
Currently based in London, Vivien’s engagements for 2017 include concerts for Devon Opera, Tait Memorial Trust, the National Portrait Gallery and St James Piccadilly, the role of Giovanna in Rigoletto for Wexford Festival Opera, and the continuation of her dementia-friendly concert series in central London called Songhaven.
Chad Vindin performs extensively throughout the UK as an accompanist and chamber musician.
Winner of the accompanist prize at the Royal Overseas League Competition, the Ludmilla Andrew Russian Song Accompanist Prize at the Royal Academy of Music, and the Maureen Lehane Vocal Awards Accompanist’s Prize, Chad is one of the rising young stars of the accompaniment world.
After studying with Malcolm Martineau and Michael Dussek at the Royal Academy of Music, Chad was awarded the position of Lord & Lady Lurgan Junior Fellow in Accompaniment at the Royal College of Music for two consecutive years. He works regularly with singers, having been a regular staff member at the Oxenfoord International Summer School for Singers and Accompanists, the Abingdon Summer School for Solo Singers, the Wessex Solo Singer’s course, and is a particularly adept recitalist, performing regularly in festivals and competitions across the UK.
He is a founding member of the Sydney Chamber Opera Company and performed with OperaUpClose in their Olivier Award-winning production of La Bohème. As an avid orchestral musician he has performed with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and the Sydney Sinfonia’s Education and Discovery Programs, and performed with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra at the Edinburgh International Festival. As a chamber musician, he performs as part of a horn trio called Trio SOL.
Chad is generously supported by the Thornton Foundation, and is grateful to have received further support by the Leverhulme Trust, the Reizenstein scholarship, and the Ian Potter Cultural Trust.
(Free recital - retiring collection)