Oliver studied drama at the BAFTA Award winning ‘Television Workshop’ and performed in several theatre productions and television series including; Chris Cross, Very Big, Very Soon and Dark of the Moon.
He attended South Nottinghamshire Music School and went on to study music at the University of Sussex and the London Guildhall. Oliver performed as part of the group Pop and won Best Vocal Act at the 2000 Loot Music Awards.
He has performed as a backing dancer on the popular French television music show Hit Machine and as a dance and vocalist contestant on BBC 1’s live Saturday night programmes; Strictly Dance Fever and Music Live! Pop Pickers Finalists.
Previously he has been the Artistic Director for 9 Pink Singers’ concerts.
Murray studied at York University, the Guildhall and the National Opera Studio before joining English National Opera where he still somehow manages to hold down his day job on the full-time Music Staff. He has been North London Chorus’s Musical Director since 2003, took on the Pinkies in 2010 and is currently leading the ENO Community Choir.
Career highlights include working with Stephen Sondheim on Pacific Overtures (ENO), working with Björk on two classical projects, accompanying rehearsals of Wagner’s RingCycle (ENO), conducting over 170 performances as Musical Director of The Sound of Music at the London Palladium, hearing his English translation of Gluck’s Le cinesi performed at the Wigmore Hall, conducting Britten’s War Requiem in Berlin in November 2013 (NLC) and acting as Assistant Conductor and Chorus Master on ENO’s recent musicals including Sweeney Todd with Emma Thompson and Bryn Terfel, and Sunset Boulevard with Glenn Close.
Murray Hipkin
For ENO he has conducted The Mikado, The Gondoliers, The Pirates of Penzance and Kismet. In Spring 2017 he conducted performances of Carousel with Katherine Jenkins and Alfie Boe, last May he conducted performances of Chess with Alexandra Burke, Cassidy Janson, Tim Howar and Michael Ball and last month he conducted nine performances of Man of la Mancha with Kelsey Grammer. Recent and future ENO projects include: The Turn of the Screw and Handel and Gretel at Regents Park Open Air Theatre, Paul Bunyan at Wiltons Music Hall, Noye’s Fludde at Theatre Royal Stratford East, and War Requiem, Akhnaten and Jack the Ripper: The Women of Whitechapel at the Coliseum.
The choir comes second in the Manchester Amateur Choral Competition – the first event like this the Pink Singers entered, which saw 15 choirs from around the country meet and compete. The competition is not solely focused on the winning choir – simply the satisfaction of having sung to a high standard and the opportunity to experience and enjoy the diversity of performance from other amateur choirs. Our bass, Tom, gives his account here…
To paraphrase Kermit the Frog, it’s not easy being a Pinkie: first there’s the rehearsal commitment, where you have to sing with your friends once a week for a few hours. Then there’s the requirement to learn and perform some spine-tingling pieces. And there’s occasional travel….
So when the rallying call went out for willing participants to enter a choral competition in Manchester and spend a weekend up north, of course I jumped at the chance. What better opportunity to see the Pinkie family, crush those post-concert blues, and turn the red rose pink in the process.
Travelling up to Manchester in style!
We set off on a cold Friday evening and after a lively train journey, gathered on Canal Street for a night out. Much silly dancing took place – the kind that only seems to exist on holiday.
Saturday was our rehearsal day. Time to have some lunch and get down to the business of polishing our competition performance. With everyone gathered in the cosy surroundings of the downstairs room at Via on Canal Street, we ran through our songs. A last chance to dot the “i”s and cross the “t”s.
And then came Sunday, competition day. The air was filled with excitement in the foyer at the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM). Choirs from across the country were here to compete for the trophy, performing in the RNCM’s stunning, newly-refurbished Concert Hall, buoyed by some fantastic support from the audience. We were scheduled to be on last, so we were able to see a good few of the other choirs perform – and as their notes resonated around the room it was clear that the standard was very high.
All too soon it was our turn. We were ushered into the warm-up room. Deep breaths all round. It feels like a different kind of adrenaline kicks in for a competition performance. A brief run-through. More deep breaths. Queuing up outside the concert hall. Then, walking on stage.
We opened with Murray’s (our conductor) arrangement (remix) of Vieni Imeneo from Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, followed by a rearrangement of Blackbird and finishing with I Wanna Dance With Somebody. As the last note of Whitney drifted up to the ceiling it was time to relax a little. We didn’t have long to wait before the results came in from the judges, and…
…were thrilled to come third! following some superb performances from the Edinburgh Police Choir and the winning choir, The Noteables.
The return journey seemed to pass by in a haze, with a collective sing-along through the entire Pinkies’ back catalogue. The acoustics of a Virgin Pendolino aren’t quite as glorious as the RNCM Concert Hall but we gave it a go anyway.
And so with Manchester my last cherry was popped – my “competition cherry” (in the Pinkies there seems to be a cherry for everything).
The last four months have been hard work. But, as I write this blog, watching a video of our competition performance has made me realise why I joined. It’s when people get together that great things happen. This season has been an absolute blast. Wild horses wouldn’t keep me away from the next one.
The Pink Singers proudly present The Big Pink Chill. Tickets are now on sale at our discounted earlybird price. Click here to go to our ticket ordering page. Doors open at 7.00p.m. and the concert starts at 7.30p.m. The nearest tube stations to the Royal College of Music are Gloucester Road and South Kensington.
The Pink Singers executive consists of the eight honorary officers – chair, musical director, secretary, treasurer and the four section leaders – who, together with an additional four exec members, form the voting 12-member management committee.
