News Item

Sound and Music have announced that Café Oto will be part of a two-year initiative exploring the public’s appetite for new music commissions. The ‘Catalyst Fund’ consortium, led by Sound and Music with the London Sinfonietta and Hudderfield Contemporary Music Festival, will see each organisation run trials involving crowd funding, mobile giving, online giving and cultivating mid-level donors. The £129,500 Arts Council award will enable each partner to launch innovative fundraising campaigns that supports work by British composers.

The Genesis Foundation are delighted to announce that Tom Kelly, a 2011-12 Genesis Sixteen (1) alumnus, has been offered the position of Lay Clerk at New College Oxford and this summer will take the lead role in a new Spitalfields Summer Music Festival production.

Musical Rumpus: Movers & Shakers is a free education production as part of Spitalfields Summer Music Festival 2013. The production designed by the Early Opera Company aims to engage 0-2 year olds with an interactive experience focused around the music of Claudio Monteverdi.

The Genesis Foundation is delighted to announce that the Young Vic has appointed theatre director Natalie Abrahami as its new Genesis Fellow and Associate Director. Natalie is the third Genesis Fellow at the Young Vic, and begins her tenure in late April 2013, as a successor to Carrie Cracknell, with whom she co-ran the Gate Theatre from 2007-2012.

Former Genesis LAMDA Scholar Tom Riley has been featured in the Daily Mail having coveted the lead role in Da Vinci’s Demons, a major new 8-part series on FOX based on the life of Leonardo da Vinci.

Tom says of the role, ‘even though Da Vinci was a genius, it’s important to remember he was just a man. It’s far more interesting to show a flawed human being, who also happens to be carrying the responsibility of the greatest mind the world has ever known.’

Da Vinci’s Demons airs every Friday at 10pm on FOX.

OPEN COURT – SUMMER 2013

The Royal Court Theatre presents Lasha Bughadze’s The President Has Come To See You on the main stage and a week of international work exploring five countries hit by European Austerity in The Big Idea: PIIGS in the upstairs Jerwood Theatre.

As Hayley Stobo prepares for her final exams at the Bolshoi Ballet, Marc Horne from the Mail on Sunday caught up with Hayley to look back at her time at the world's most prestigious ballet academy.

Hayley reflects: “I honestly can’t believe that I’ve got two weeks left to go and that’s it. It’s the craziest feeling in the world. I’m not saying that it wasn’t hard, but now – with the end in sight – I can honestly say that every single day has been worth it.”

On Thursday 4 April 2013 at 7.30pm, the beautiful and harmonically rich music of Will Todd, including commissions by the Genesis Foundation, will be performed at Cadogan Hall by the award-winning chamber choir Tenebrae and the English Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Nigel Short.

Carrie Cracknell’s critically acclaimed production of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House will be returning to the Young Vic by popular demand this week, running from 28 March until 20 April 2013. 

Feast, an ambitious new play co-produced by the Royal Court’s Genesis Foundation-supported International Playwrights department and the Young Vic, received great praise from the critics. The extraordinary production explores the journey of Yoruba culture and brings together the work of five playwrights from different countries:  Yunior Garcia Aguilera (Cuba), Rotimi Babatunde (Nigeria), Marcos Barbosa (Brazil), Tanya Barfield (USA) and Gbolahan Obisesan (UK). It is directed by Rufus Norris.

What the critics said:

★★★★★

Genesis LAMDA Scholar Ryan Donaldson takes the stage in a LAMDA production of Parade at the Old Vic Tunnels which is running from 20 to 27 February. Parade is a musical drama based on a book by Alfred Uhry. Ryan plays the role of the attorney, Luther Rosser, in the production which explores the potentially dangerous power of patriotism when mixed with ignorance to undermine freedom, justice and peace. This is the Genesis Scholar’s final year of study on the Three Year Acting course.