Finalists Announced for 2013 Principality Building Society Welsh Musical Theatre Young Singer of the Year

The preliminary round of the 11th annual Principality Building Society Welsh Musical Theatre Young Singer Of The Year competition was held on Saturday, February 23 at Gowerton School, Swansea.

Thirty talented young contestants performed two musical theatre songs each in front of a panel of judges and an enthusiastic audience of musical theatre fans and aficionados. After careful deliberation, the judges eventually named the quartet of contestants who will compete for the 2013 title: Amelia Friswell, Adam Robert Lewis (both alumni of the Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts), Christopher Hughes and Holly-Anna Lloyd (both graduates of the Royal Welsh College of Music And Drama).

In 2010 (see photo) the award was presented to Michael Risely. A number of previous winners of the coveted title have gone on to play principal roles in the West End, including Olivier Award winner David Thaxton (Passion, Love Never Dies, Les Miserables), Connie Fisher (The Sound Of Music), Hayley Gallivan (The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Grease, Spring Awakening) and Kit Orton (Spamalot).

The final of the 2013 competition, which is sponsored by the Principality Building Society and organized by the prestigious Dunvant Male Choir, will be held at the Taliesin Arts Centre, Swansea on Saturday, April 20th. The evening will feature not only the vocal battle between the four finalists but also songs performed by the Dunvant Male Choir and by the 2012 Welsh Musical Theatre Young Singer Of The Year, Michael Rees.

The Taliesin Arts Centre is named after the iconic medieval Welsh poet who is believed to have sung at the courts of three British Celtic kings - a perfectly apt setting for an evening of theatre that will set out to prove that the ancient Welsh cultural tradition of lyrical and musical performance is very much alive and well in 2013.

Robert Gould is a graduate of the University of Wales, Swansea, a former teacher, a writer of history books for schools (The French Revolution and European Nationalism, 1848-71) and the librettist and lyricist of a number of musicals. Collaborating with composer Ty Kroll, he has written the book and lyrics for the musicals, Lovers, Alone and Vocalize!. Concerts of songs from Lovers and Vocalize! were presented at the University of Wisconsin, Madison (in March 2002 and April 2003) and Alone received its world premiere staging in Madison, Wisconsin in April 2003. He has co-written the book & lyrics(with Jimmy Granstrom) for The Dying Game, a musical that speaks for the victims of HIV/AIDS in Africa (with music by Filip von Uexkull, Ty Kroll & Tristan Bons) - which received a showcase production at the Greenwich Musical Futures season in 2005. He wrote lyrics for the Tim Prottey-Jones albums More With Every Line and Surrounded By The Sounds and is currently developing the musical Roundabout with songwriter Joe Sterling and the musicals Based On A True Story, Elephant Juice, Grace Notes, Flop and My Land's Shore with composer Christopher J. Orton.

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