Allan Clayton to be Featured Artist in Aldeburgh

Allan Clayton will be a Featured Artist at this year's Aldeburgh Festival (17–29 June). He first appeared at Snape Maltings in 2005 as Albert Herring, as part of the Britten Pears Young Artist Programme, and has sung there many times since.

He opens his residency singing Britten's song cycle, Nocturne, with the Knussen Chamber Orchestra (15 June). He then joins Edward Gardner and Royal Academy of Music Symphony Orchestra in Refugee, written for him by Mark-Anthony Turnage, based on texts by Emily Dickinson, Benjamin Zephaniah, Auden and Brian Bilston (19 June).

He gives the world premiere of a work by Tom Coult, with Dunedin Consort, as well as singing Zelenka's Lamentations (21 June). He returns to Britten, alongside BBC Symphony Orchestra, on 22 June, singing Our Hunting Fathers, a setting of Auden's poetry; and for his final performance of the festival, with Antonio Pappano at the piano, to sing Britten's Seven Sonnets of Michaelangelo (28 June), as well as the original chamber version of Vaughan Williams’ On Wenlock Edge, with members of London Symphony Orchestra.