A concert from Richard Decker and friends
A Gilbert and Sullivan Society event
'Ballads, songs and snatches'
Young counter tenor, Richard Decker accompanied by some fellow post-graduate young professional singers will give us an afternoon concert of Gilbert and Sullivan and other items from their repertoire. He will be joined by:
Soprano Emily Jennings
Tenor Sebastian Blount
Baritone Oliver Bowes
Pianist: Francesca Laur
Richard and friends were very well-received by the Society at our post-AGM concert in 2024. By popular demand he is now back for a whole afternoon. Richard graduated from the Royal College of Music in 2023 having been brought up in an environment of Gilbert and Sullivan as his parents both regularly sing principal roles with amateur companies. In 2011, whilst singing with the Queen’s Chapel of the Savoy he was awarded BBC Chorister of the Year.
Date and time: Saturday 18th April 2026 at 14.30 (doors open at 14.15)
Venue: The Club for Acts and Actors, 20 Bedford Street, London. WC3E 9HP
Voluntary contribution: £5 members, £10 non-members
In order to guarantee your place, we recommend you buy your tickets on line in advance. Members will have priority booking until 5 days before the event when any unsold tickets will be made available for the general public.
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Artiste biographies
Emily Jennings – Soprano
Described as ‘an extremely engaging singer with not only a marvellous instrument but a real gift for storytelling’ (Association of English Singers and Speakers), Emily is a Britten Pears Young Artist (Elizabeth Harwood Memorial Award holder), a SongEasel Young Artist and a Cincinnati Song Initiative Fellow. Emily graduated with Distinction from the Royal College of Music where she completed both an undergraduate and master’s degree as an award holder supported by an Alice Templeton award. Emily was awarded first prize for the Brooks Van Der Pump English Song Competition during her studies. She was also awarded 2nd Prize in the 2024 Association of English Singers and Speakers’ English Song Competition as well as 2nd Prize in the 2024 London Choral Sinfonia’s Leach Award for Singing Competition. Emily was also selected to perform in the live rounds of the 2024 Wigmore Hall International Song competition.
Emily is a passionate performer of art song with a particular fondness for folksongs and storytelling. She has performed at Wigmore Hall, the Britten Studio at Snape Maltings and the Cadogan Hall amongst many of the UK’s most exciting recital platforms. Emily has a long love of traditional folk music and frequently performs at some of the most exciting UK festivals including Glastonbury.
On the concert platform Emily has performed with many of the UK and Europe's most exciting ensembles including the Utopia Orchestra and Choir, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the Academy of Ancient Music, the Britten Sinfonia and Voices, and the London Handel Orchestra and Singers as part of events such as the BBC Proms, the Salzburger Festspiele and the Aldeburgh Festival.
Richard Decker – Countertenor
A finalist in the 2024 Kathleen Ferrier Awards, and hailed as a ‘countertenor star of the future’ (OperaNow), Richard trained at the Royal College of Music, graduating MMus with Distinction in 2024, and previously read Italian and French at St John’s College, Cambridge, where he was a choral scholar. Operatic highlights include Arsamene (Serse), Orlovsky (Die Fledermaus), Public Opinion (Orpheus in the Underworld) and The Sorceress (Dido and Aeneas), as well as more modern roles including Lucifer (The Fall of Lucifer – Burgon) and Nicholas Lear (The Anthem – Eaglesfield). He has worked with leading opera companies including Merry Opera, HGO, Kentish Opera and Tête-à-Tête, and this summer, he will make his role debut as Rinaldo with Ensemble OrQuesta.
Richard has a deep affinity with the music of Gilbert and Sullivan, having watched his parents perform all of the lead soprano and tenor roles throughout his childhood. He has continued in their footsteps by taking on various alto roles, including Dame Hannah, Lady Blanche and Ruth, and this September he will perform as the Fairy Queen at the Minack Theatre in Cornwall.
Richard’s oratorio and concert work is diverse, from Handel’s Messiah (including touring with Merry Opera’s staged production), Bach’s Passions, and Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater, to Orff’s Carmina Burana and Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle. He has given song recitals across the UK and Italy, ranging from lute song to world premières of new song cycles. In 2024, he won Third Prize and the Early Music Prize in the AESS English Song Awards, and was a finalist in the Schubert Song Prize. Richard is also a conductor, pianist and organist, and is currently Musical Director of Dartford Choral Society and Ferrier Operatic Society, and Director of Music at St Augustine’s Church, Tooting. He has conducted productions of both The Yeomen of the Guard and The Gondoliers whilst at university, as well as Mozart operas and musical theatre works. He also operates a busy private teaching studio, and trains the choristers at both The King’s Chapel of the Savoy and Tonbridge School Chapel Choir.
Sebastian Blount – Tenor
A Music graduate from Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, Sebastian maintains a varied portfolio of creative work across the Cambridge choral and theatre scene. Having been a choral scholar and lay clerk at the Choir of Gonville and Caius College Cambridge from 2015-2022, Sebastian has since guested widely across the numerous chapel and college choirs, and is currently attached to Pembroke College, where he learns with Daniel Joy. Gilbert & Sullivan operettas have provided the basis for Sebastian’s on-stage development, with his initial appearance in the Cambridge University Gilbert & Sullivan Society’s 2018 production of Trial by Jury instilling a love for the duo’s work in him. He has since appeared in principal roles in twelve further G&S productions in the ensuing years, and has been a part of Tutte Theatre’s award-winning run of productions, from the Bobby Award-winning Trial By Jury at the Edinburgh Fringe, to their 2025 receipt of the Isabel Jay Cup. In addition to his on-stage projects, which have since branched out from solely G&S to a wider focus on opera of all kinds, Sebastian has become enthralled by directing, starting once again with G&S: his productions of Iolanthe and Patience in West Road Concert Hall in 2024 and 2025 respectively being both critical and financial successes. Sebastian is currently preparing to be Lord Tolloller in the upcoming Iolanthe at the Minack Theatre this September, and to direct a series of English, Italian, and German operas across 2026 and 2027.
Oliver Bowes – Baritone
Oliver Bowes, baritone, was the Jessie Sumner Scholar at the Royal College of Music, where he studied with Ben Johnson and Bryan Evans. Recent productions include The Traveller Curlew River with the Southrepps Festival; Escamillo Carmen with Opera Integral; The Mariner in Contemporary Music Ventures’ The Rime of the Ancient Mariner; Saul Saul and Adonis Venus and Adonis with Richmond Opera; Counsel for the Plaintiff Trial by Jury at the Southrepps Festival; Enrico Lucia di Lammermoor for Brent Opera; Figaro in excerpts from Il barbiere di Siviglia and Smirnov in Walton’s The Bear, Falstaff in Nicolai’s The Merry Wives of Windsor and Athanael in Massenet’s Thais for RCM Opera Scenes; and creating the role of I in Alisa Zaika’s I (Romance) for the RCM Contemporary Opera Scenes. He has also been honoured to sing in masterclasses with Sir Thomas Allen, Pauliina Tukiainen, and Ben Johnson.
As a soloist for oratorio, he has recently sung Carmina Burana with the Chelsea Arts Club Singers, Mozart’s Requiem both at Leith Hill Music Festival and with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Bach’s Johannespassion for Romsey Choral Society, and Handel’s La Resurrezione and Fauré’s Requiem, both at St Barnabas Ealing. Upcoming events include Bach’s Matthäuspassion with Beverley Chamber Choir, and Christus in Bach’s Johannespassion at Lincoln Cathedral.
Francesca Lauri – Piano
Francesca Lauri is a collaborative pianist specialising in the vocal repertoire of song and opera. She graduated her Masters degree with distinction from the Royal College of Music in 2024, where she studied with Simon Lepper, Roger Vignoles and Kathron Sturrock, and has been the Lord and Lady Lurgan collaborative piano fellow for the RCM vocal department for the past two years.
Francesca has won the Accompanist prizes at the 2025 Kathleen Ferrier Awards, the 2024 Royal Over-Seas League, the Eastbourne Singing Competition, the Ashburnham English Song Awards, the Somerset Song Competition, the John Kerr Awards and the AESS Dorothy Richardson Awards. She is the current Viola Tunnard Young Artist for the Britten Pears Foundation as well as a former Wigmore French Song Exchange, Leeds Lieder, Oxford Song and Samling Institute Young Artist.