ENROL – EXPERIENCE – ENJOY

The choir will soon be re-releasing the new version of the CarltonMVC Music Maker in 2024!

The choir are committed to supporting and promoting young musicians in our area with our Music Competition. The original Music Maker competitions turn 25 years old in 2024 and we will celebrate this exciting event with a new, revamped and retitled version of the competition being launched. Watch this space for details as soon as it has been developed which we now know will include a secondary prize based around a lady who was a famous singer from Nottingham called Constance Shacklock OBE. This part of the new competition will be headed up by local professional singer Katharine Dryden.

Who was Constance Shacklock? (1913 – 1999)
As a founder member of the Royal Opera, Constance Shacklock graduated from minor roles to stardom. She also gave Lieder recitals all over the country to the delight of the large audiences which she attracted on her visits to provincial cities. After withdrawing from Covent Garden she accepted many invitations to sing in continental opera houses with great success. The legendary conductor Erich Kleiber thought her the best operatic Mezzo in the world. She was also a soloist in the first-ever performance in Italy of The Dream of Gerontius, the first British singer to perform behind the Iron Curtain in 1951, and one of the first to sing at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. She also became an immensely popular figure at The Last Night of the Proms, the only singer to have performed Rule Britania on 10 occasions under the baton of Sir Malcolm Sargent. She sang alongside Kirsten Flagstad in Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde playing the role of Brangane. Her other operatic roles were Carmen in Carmen, Amneris in Aida, Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier, Azucena in Il Trovatore and Mrs Sedley, in Peter Grimes. At the end of her career, she played Mother Abbess in the West End in The Sound of Music. When she retired from the stage she became a professor of Singing at the Royal Academy of Music. She was awarded an OBE in 1971, and in 2017 a blue plaque was unveiled at the Theatre Royal, Nottingham by Katharine Dryden for BBC Music Day. Most great singers are gradually forgotten over time, however, it would be very fitting to commemorate Constance and keep her memory alive for young artists with a new memorial.

Previous Winners

Congratulations to Music Maker Competition Winner 2022 – Benjamin Staniforth (Baritone). Benjamin performed at our Festival Concert at the Albert Hall in 2022 after a year of no winner due to Covid-19. We will see and hear Benjamin perform with the choir in 2023.