New Fellow of the Royal Northern College of Music

We are delighted that on Thursday 2nd December 2021 Professor David Owen Norris was made a Fellow of the Royal Northern College of Music at their Congregation of Awards.

David has been giving masterclasses each term at the RNCM for some years, and is currently also working on the Jose and Rafton Smallwood masterclasses, a specially crafted set of presentations which were begun online in 2020 with three classes where the choice was made by poet rather than composer – Anacreon, Michelangelo & some unfamiliar settings of Shakespeare.

This year's classes, in collaboration with the Manchester Art Gallery, relate songs to painting, in three categories: Impressionist, Pre-Raphaelite and 'Songs of the Blue Horizon' – Seascapes. This sort of categorisation shows both songs and pictures in a new light, as David has found in recitals in the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, the National Gallery in London, the Laing in Newcastle and Pallant House in Chichester.