James Newby

A recipient of the Richard Tauber Prize for best interpretation of a Schubert Lied at the 2015 Wigmore Hall/Kohn International Song Competition, James has since enjoyed a close relationship with the Hall, a recent highlight being a performance of Die schöne Müllerin with Simon Lepper.

Most recently, he has been awarded a prestigious Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award, in recognition and support of his emerging status as one of the most outstanding young musicians of his generation, and this summer he will take part in their twentieth anniversary celebrations at Wigmore Hall singing Mahler with Mitsuko Uchida.

The release of his debut solo CD I Wonder as I Wander on BIS Records in 2020 with pianist Joseph Middleton was the winner of the Diapason d’Or Découverte and described in Gramophone Magazine as “a performance that sets the tone, announcing Newby as an impressive artist”.

James studies with Robert Dean.

James Newby wished to dedicate his second disc on BIS to his sister Laura who passed away in 2015, her daughter and his mother. After singing Gerald Finzi’s ‘Fear no more the heat o’ the sun’ at her funeral, he felt it fitting that the cycle from which it is taken, Let us Garlands Bring, would form the centrepiece of the programme. Alongside this cycle, pianist Joseph Middleton and Newby have designed a programme of English songs that reflect on themes of loss, grief and death – but also joy, love and healing with varying styles, sound worlds and atmospheres.
George Butterworth, Rebecca Clarke, Edward Elgar, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Benjamin Britten, Liza Lehmann and Errollyn Wallen are just some of the composers who complete the programme, including Arthur Somervell with his cycle ‘A Shropshire Lad’. Like Heinrich Heine’s poems that Schumann used for his famous cycle Dichterliebe, these poems by Alfred Edward Housman deal with unrequited love in first person lyrics. This disc ends on a lighter note with the whimsical song, ‘The Green-eyed Dragon’ by Wolseley Charles, which often concludes live performances as an encore.

RECORDING ‘FALLEN TO DUST’

"All You Who Sleep Tonight"

by Jonathan Dove

When deciding on the repertoire for his début album, James Newby’s first choice fell on An die ferne Geliebte, songs that he had been performing ever since the beginning of his career. But Beethoven’s song cycle – and perhaps even more so the quasi-operatic Adelaide – also sets a tone for the entire album: that of longing and of wanting to be elsewhere, near the distant beloved. These are emotions that Schubert, perhaps more than any other composer, has plumbed in depth, and Newby went on to select five of his songs that in various ways depict the restlessness and loneliness of the eternal wanderer.

Mahler is another composer who knew something about longing – for instance that it can be deadly, which he demonstrated with his Zu Straßburg auf der Schanz, in which a soldier awaits execution after trying to desert to his homeland while the piano imitates the muffled rolling of drums. The military theme continues in the high-strung Revelge, as a young soldier marches towards his death, thinking about his sweetheart with ever-greater desperation. The final song by Mahler, Urlicht, expresses the anguish and pain of earthly life, and the longing for Heaven and, in effect, death. Framing this programme with five folk song arrangements by Benjamin Britten, James Newby and Joseph Middleton, his partner at the piano, explore Man’s never-ending search (geographical or psychological) for that distant object of desire: who, what or wherever it may be.

In September 2019 James joined the Ensemble of the Staatsoper Hannover where in 2021 he garnered particular praise for his debut as Eddy in Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Greek. Other important role debuts in Hannover include Guglielmo Così fan tutte and the title role in Eugene Onegin.

In the forthcoming season he will make his French opera debut as Der Junker in Schreker Der Schatzgräber at Opéra National du Rhin; his debut at the Komische Oper Berlin as Guglielmo; will sing Aeneas in Purcell Dido and Aeneas at The Grange Festival and further ahead will make his debuts at Garsington Opera, Theater an der Wien and Gran Teatre del Liceu Barcelona.

Concert performances this season include Haydn The Creation with the Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Bart Van Reyn and Handel’s Messiah with Harry Christophers and The Sixteen. Past concert appearances include Berlioz with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Mozart with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Handel with the Britten Sinfonia.  He has also appeared in other baroque repertoire with conductors David Bates, Jonathan Cohen and John Butt, toured in Europe with the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century singing Bach and made his US debut with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Juanjo Mena.