Fiona's Biography

After graduating from the Royal Academy of Music Fiona Clarke worked as a professional consort singer with The Sixteen, the Gabrieli Consort, the King’s Consort and the BBC Singers. Her work with these groups took her all over the world including Japan, Australia, Israel, America, Canada, Europe and onto numerous recordings.
Her solo singing career includes recent performances of Brahms Requiem, Dvorak Stabat Mater, Monteverdi Vespers, Bach B Minor Mass, Mozart Requiem, Carmina Burana, Handel’s Messiah and Rutter Requiem.
Her present singing career continues to include some consort work and singing on the backing tracks of a variety of films, including Chicken Run, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the Curse of the Were Rabbit, The Omen, and the Da Vinci Code.
As Musical Director of the Salisbury Community Choir (a post she held for 10 years) Fiona travelled to Poland, Germany, France and South Africa where they performed the African premiere of Karl Jenkins’ The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace on Freedom Day with a number of other choirs in and around the Cape Town area. This project was named ‘A Rainbow Choir for a Rainbow Nation’ by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Members of Salisbury Community Choir have most recently returned from New York where they performed The Armed Man with an international group of singers in the Carnegie Hall. While they were in New York they also gave a workshop in Mott Haven Village Preparatory High School in The Bronx.
For her work with the Community Choir Fiona was recently awarded Wiltshire Life’s ‘Artist/Musician of the Year’. Fiona was a keynote speaker at last year’s Making Music Conference in Manchester.
Fiona teaches singing both at Salisbury Cathedral School and Bryanston School and gave a master class and private lessons on this year‘s Eton Choral Course.
She is in demand as a workshop leader both locally and nationally working with both adults and children in Manchester, Bristol, Ipswich, Dorchester, London and Stoke-on-Trent. She worked for Glyndebourne Opera on a schools project of ‘The Magic Flute’ and with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment on a project with Purcell‘s ‘Dido and Aeneas‘ and Handel‘s Messiah. Fiona has been appointed Facilitator in the government’s ‘Vocal Force’. She has also been recently appointed as Musical Director of the Bournemouth Symphony Youth Chorus.

Babes and Ballads Newsletter 1

Babes and Ballads is a newly formed ladies choir. Currently we meet on Tuesday evenings from 7.15-8.45 at Salisbury Cathedral School, 1 The Close, Salisbury SP1 2EQ. However, we will be changing to a Monday evening in the New Year. There you will meet lovely ladies and sing lovely lively music. Cost is £4 per rehearsal. Nobody is expected to read music and nobody is auditioned.

Dates for the diary already are a trip to Bath Christmas Market on Saturday 29th November 08, where we will perform a short set of Christmassey music outside the Abbey. There will be a bus from Salisbury Coach Park at 10.30am and we will leave Bath at 8pm - giving you LOTS of time for a spot of Christmas shopping and a mega lunch!
There will be a Christmas concert of an extraordinary nature on 9th December 08, venue to be confirmed. This will be a low pressure fun evening of working with our audience to create an atmosphere to soothe the spirits when Christmas is looming.

In February 2009 we will be singing at an Australian event in the Guildhall, Salisbury - more details to follow, but no hats with corks I promise!

We are going to have a visiting workshop leader who is the Director of the London Bulgarian Choir and she will be teaching us a number of Bulgarian songs, this will be in the early New Year.

How about a Mamma Mia day!?! We will learn songs from the amazing film/show and work with a choreographer to bring our songs to life.