New Zealand continues to make its mark on the international cultural stage with Christopher Bruerton becoming the first ever foreign national member of The King's Singers and the Royal New Zealand Ballet being nominated for two awards in the annual Nat
The King’s Singers
Auckland Town Hall, The Edge
Saturday 25 February 2012.
National Dance Awards
The Robin Howard Theatre, The Place
London
Monday, 23rd January 2012.
New Zealand continues to make its mark on the international cultural stage with Christopher Bruerton becoming the first ever foreign national member of The King’s Singers and the Royal New Zealand Ballet being nominated for two awards in the annual National Dance Awards in the UK.
Baritone Christopher Bruerton was born and raised in Christchurch and in 1995 joined the Christchurch Cathedral Choir where he spent fifteen years singing as a treble.
During this time he also recorded two solo CDs with the late Organist and Director of Music, David Childs. Whilst still singing treble, Christopher attended Burnside High School and was part of the Specialist Music Programme. In 2005 he graduated from the University of Canterbury with a Bachelors of Music (First Class Honours).
He has performed and worked with a number of other choirs including the New Zealand Secondary Students’ Choir, the National Youth Choir of New Zealand and the Christchurch Boys’ Choir .
In 2010, he moved to England taking up a position as Bass Lay Clerk in the choir of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford.
Having been appointed to the choir his first tour with the Grammy-award winning group will bring him home for The King’s Singers first New Zealand concert in 27 years.
The King’s Singers is an acclaimed vocal ensemble with a vast repertoire spanning medieval to renaissance, romantic to contemporary, folk and pop. Formed in 1968, The King’s Singers has had only 20 members and has been described by Gramophone Magazine as “enchanting the ear from first to last note”.
Following the tour, he will be performing in some of the world’s most important concert halls including Carnegie Hall in New York and the Philharmonie in Berlin.
The Royal New Zealand Ballet this month was nominated as one of the finalists in the “Outstanding Company” while one of the Best Classical Choreography awards finalists is Andrew Simmons for his work ‘A Song in the Dark’ performed by the Royal New Zealand Ballet on their 2011 tour of the UK.
"A Song in the Dark" was described by The Telegraph as “a poignant interplay of light and shadows, people and phantoms. Set to a collage of mesmerising music by Philip Glass, the choreography swirls around the stage, the dancers’ bodies multiplied by their shadows cast on a white side screen”.
The Arts Desk, the UK online critics site said of the company, “All ballet companies dream of finding a genuine creative talent among their ranks, and the Royal New Zealand Ballet, visiting from the farthest end of the world ballet map… look well placed to impress the world on their travels”.
The Awards, cover performances given between 1 September 2010 and 31 August, 2011 and are presented by The Critics Circle which is the oldest critics' organisation in the world with 400 members who work in the media throughout the United Kingdom.
In making the announcement, the organisation noted that. "The frequency of both incoming and outgoing tours and the increasing global nature of the dance community meant there was no longer a need to distinguish between home and overseas companies. Hence, we now just have an award for the Outstanding Company over the last year. It is great in this first year to see that there are two home-based and two-overseas based companies up for the award”..
There are ten awards categories with only three or four nominees in each so New Zealand has done brilliantly up against companies such as The Royal Ballet, The English National Ballet and the Rambert Dance Company.
