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Music Maker Competition and Constance Shacklock Memorial Prize

Carlton Male Voice Choir are passionate in supporting and promoting young musicians in our area with our Music Competition. The original Music Maker competitions turned 25 years old in 2024 – something celebrated with the launch of a second winning prize.

This competition is an exciting opportunity for young, skilled musicians and singers aged 16-20 with a passion for music, who love performing and can produce music to a high standard. The winners joined the ranks of many talented previous winners including three members of Nottingham’s illustrious musical family the Kanneh-Masons, Konya, Braimah and Isata.

The main prize, the Music Maker Trophy and a cash prize of £700 was awarded to our 2024 winner Sonny Hall (Electric Guitar) with the opportunity for Sonny to perform with Carlton MVC at their annual Festival Concert at the prestigious Albert Hall, Nottingham back on 22^nd June 2024.

The competition is currently being reworked once more to make it more relevant to todays need – watch this space for further details.

L-R Judges: Katharine Dryden (Head Judge) Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason, Roger Holland, David Butterworth, Andrew Atkinson, Music Maker 2024 Sonny Hall and judge David Machell

The additional cash prize of £500 was awarded to Ellie-Jean Winfield (Soprano), as the performer who showed the greatest potential. This was a new prize for 2024, in memory of one of England’s and Nottingham’s finest opera singers, Constance Shacklock (see details below).

Ellie-Jean Whitfield (Constance Shacklock Award Winner)

The Competition featured Preliminary Performances and a Final Performance. The events were open to the public and were supported by performances by Carlton Male Voice Choir as well as funding the local Nottingham based charity Footprints Conductive Education Centre.

Music Maker Competition – How to enter (when open to entries)

Please check you comply with the entry conditions set out below.

If you meet the criteria, and if you would like to enter this fantastic competition in its 26^th Anniversary please email our Chairman, Chris Coats, at Marketing@carltonmvc.org and ask him to send you an entry form when the competition opens in 2025.

When returning the form we will ask you to include a link to a video of you singing or playing your instrument. We will use that performance video to select the 12 entrants who will be invited to one of the two heats. The best performers at the heats will then be invited to the final of the competition where the two winners will be chosen by the panel of judges.

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.