Welcome

Jamie W. Hall is a concert baritone and ensemble singer with a passion for oratorio and art song.

Growing up in a Yorkshire mining village in the 1980s, Jamie’s route into classical music was somewhat unconventional. With only a few piano lessons and an adolescence spent busking show tunes behind him, he nevertheless followed his heart and found himself studying music at university where he discovered both his voice and a love of classical choral music.

Even before graduating in 2005, Jamie had established himself as a skilful ensemble singer and concert soloist, and it was in 2009 that he was appointed a full-time member of the BBC Singers, a role which he has combined successfully with a busy solo singing schedule for over a decade.

The COVID epidemic and subsequent lockdown has seen Jamie more recently expanding his art song repertoire, delivering a series of daily #BathrobeRecitals via Twitter – for which he was commended by the Royal Philharmonic Society – and founding the Proud Songsters, a group bringing live recitals of art song to new audiences via YouTube. The Proud Songsters project allowed Jamie to perform for the first time Schubert’s cycle Die Schöne Müllerin. Latterly Jamie’s #BathrobeRecitalsAdventCalendar raised over £3000 for Help Musicians UK, and his various efforts were recognised at the inaugural Classical Music Digital Awards which named Jamie ‘Musician of the Year 2020’.

 

  As a member of the BBC Singers, Jamie has performed a vast array of choral music, both sublime and ridiculous, and has often appeared as soloist, notably Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle with David Hill; Joseph Horovitz’ Captain Noah and his Floating Zoo with John Wilson and his orchestra; and singing the title role of Britten’s Noye’s Fludde alongside the legendary Michael Crawford.

Jamie has sung operatic roles on the concert platform and in Proms performances, notably in Electra (Strauss) and in Khovanshchina (Mussorgsky) both under Semyon Bychkov; and he relished the chance to become a foul-mouthed Death Row inmate alongside Joyce DiDonato in Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking under Mark Wigglesworth.

Jamie has sung all of the major oratorio roles and concert works with choirs and orchestras up and down the country, from Verdi’s Requiem at Ely Cathedral (Stephen Cleobury), at Liverpool Philharmonic Hall and at the Sherborne Festival; Bach’s St John Passion (Christus) in the cathedrals of Chester, Coventry, Winchester and Guildford; Vaughan Williams’ A Sea Symphony at Tewkesbury Abbey, Dona Nobis Pacem at Bristol Cathedral, Five Mystical Songs at Southampton Central Library; and too many performances of Handel’s Messiah to name. Jamie has a great affection for the works of J.S. Bach and has regularly performed his Magnificat, the Passion settings, the Mass in B minor, Christmas Oratorio and various cantatas including BVW 82, Ich Habe Genug.

Jamie also enjoys a secondary musical career as a composer with a number of vocal works to his name. His 2016 #ChoirsAgainstCancer project raised over £17,000 for Macmillan Cancer Support.