Kim Criswell
Kim Criswell has been singing and acting professionally for more than forty years. Her career has taken her from Broadway to the West End to the international concert stage, resulting in a most unusual career path unmatched by any other singer, all the while specializing in the classic American theatre songbook. She has appeared at La Scala/Milan, La Fenice/Venice, Teatro di San Carlo/Naples, Accademia Nazionale Santa Cecilia/Rome, Théâtre du Châtelet and Opéra Comique/Paris, Concertgebouw/Amsterdam, Carnegie Recital Hall/NY, Konzerthaus, Musikverein and Volksoper/Vienna, Philharmonie and Konzerthaus/Berlin, Teatro Nacional de São Carlos/Lisbon, and Mariinsky Theatre/St. Petersburg, not to mention multiple appearances at London’s Wigmore, Royal Albert, Barbican, Royal Festival, Queen Elizabeth, and Cadogan Halls, the Purcell Rooms, Linbury Studio and even Buckingham Palace.
She has sung with many of the world’s greatest symphony orchestras, from the Berlin Philharmonic and BCMG orchestras conducted by Sir Simon Rattle, with whom she has recorded Leonard Bernstein’s Wonderful Town, to the Lepzig Gewandhaus, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Orchestre National de Lyon, Iceland Philharmonic, Winnipeg and Toronto Symphonies, and Royal Concertgebouw orchestras and virtually all of the major UK orchestras; also many of Europe’s radio orchestras. She has appeared in the BBC Proms 4 times.
Critically acclaimed and Olivier-award nominated for “Annie” in Annie Get Your Gun/ London’s Prince of Wales Theatre, she also won Washington DC’s Helen Hayes Award for Side by Side by Sondheim. Most recently in the US she starred in Call Me Madam /Goodspeed Opera House, Candide/Ravinia Festival, and co-starred with Joseph Fiennes and Charles Edwards in Happy Days in the Art World/NYC, while recent UK roles include Big Mama in Cat On a Hot Tin Roof/Royal Exchange and Carrie’s mother in Carrie/Southwark Playhouse.
Kim’s Broadway credits include “Lucy” opposite Sting in 3 Penny Opera, and the original production of Nine. She was “Grizabella” in Cats in the original LA production, and also appeared as “Lalume” in Kismet/Opera Pacific, Michigan Opera, recently reprised for Vienna Volksoper. Other Broadway credits include The First, Baby and Stardust, and West End credits include Elegies for Angels, Punks and Raging Queens, The Slow Drag, and Dames At Sea. Other productions include The Sound of Music/Theatre du Chatelet (Mother Abbess), Candide/La Scala, Theatre du Chatelet (Old Lady), Anything Goes/Grange Park Opera (Reno Sweeney), Into the Woods/Derby Playhouse (Witch), Of Thee I Sing/Opera North, Atlanta Opera (Diana Devereaux), and Lady Be Good/La Fenice, Lisbon Opera (Susie Trevor).
Film/TV credits include The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous, Savage Play, and Hysteria (2013), and she has recorded more than forty albums, including four solo albums.
Edward Seckerson
Formerly Chief Classical Music Critic of The Independent, Edward Seckerson is a writer, broadcaster, podcaster, and musical theatre obsessive. He wrote and presented the long-running BBC Radio 3 series “Stage & Screen”, in which he interviewed many of the biggest names in the business – among them Julie Andrews, Angela Lansbury, Liza Minnelli, Stephen Sondheim, and Andrew Lloyd Webber. During his journalistic career he has written for most major music publications and is still on the panel of Gramophone magazine. He appears regularly on BBC Radio 3 and 4 and presented the 2007 series of the musical quiz Counterpoint. On television, he has commentated a number of times at the Cardiff Singer of the World competition. He has published books on Mahler and the conductor Michael Tilson Thomas.
Edward conducted one of the last major interviews with Leonard Bernstein, and his audio podcast Sondheim – In Good Company proved a significant contribution to Sondheim’s 80th birthday year. He is still doing the rounds of theatres all over the country with Facing The Music – a show he devised and performs with Dame Patricia Routledge, chronicling her little-known career in musical theatre, and hosts his Comparing Notes series of conversations with live performances with stars of musical theatre at Pizza Express Live Holborn. He devised two shows with Jason Carr – Bernstein Revealed, with Sophie-Louise Dann, and Rodgers Revealed, with Anna Francolini – which explore the life and work of Leonard Bernstein and Richard Rodgers respectively. Bernstein Revealed featured in the Bernstein 100 centenary celebrations at the Barbican and was performed elsewhere in 2018.
Most recently Edward has hosted on stage interviews, in association with Fane Productions, with Claude-Michel Schönberg, Dame Diana Rigg and Broadway legend, Patti LuPone.
