Darren Abrahams, Tenor has appeared in opera all over the UK, Europe and the US working for such companies as ENO, Scottish Opera, WNO, Wexford Festival Opera, Teatro Comunale di Bologna and the Young Vic. Roles include Ottavio (Don Giovanni); Ferrando (Cosi fan Tutte), Count (The Barber of Seville); Ernesto (Don Pasquale); Iopas (The Trojans) Molqi (The Death of Klinghoffer) and Don Ramiro (La Cenerentola). Darren regularly premieres modern works and has taken part in developing new operas for The Royal Opera, Complicite, The Opera Group, Opera Circus, the Batignano Festival, American Opera Projects and the Brian Irvine Ensemble. He is currently creating the title role in Naciketa, a new opera by Nigel Osborne and Ariel Dorfman. As a concert he has appeared with the LPO, the Royal Seville Symphony, the St Petersburg Symphony and The King’s Consort. Darren regularly works with pianist Lindy Tennent-Brown and guitarist Jack Ross developing 2 unique concert partnerships creating programmes based around themes, rather than genre which combine many different styles of music.
Coming from a performance training in theatre and opera, Darren has much personal experience working in the arts which he brings to his work as a trainer and animateur. Since his early 20‘s he has been regularly involved in leading theatre projects for young people, actively designing and running workshops for mixed ages 5 to 18. He has facilitated theatre summer schools in both the UK the US and mainland Europe, creating work that has ranged from improvised scenes to full scale musical productions, in venues as diverse as a skate park in Surrey to a lakeside in Maine.
As an opera singer Darren has worked as a singing animateur for many of the major British opera companies (including The Royal Opera, Glyndebourne, Opera North, WNO and Garsington Opera) in projects ranging from intensive weekends creating a finished performance, to three hour introductory sessions designed to prepare inexperienced opera goers to see a production that evening. Workshops can involve participants ranging from ages 10 to 80 in schools, community centres and universities.
In 2002 Darren began his training in Sound Healing and has achieved Level 2 Power of Sound from The School of Sacred Sound, Australia. This training is an intensive course in the use of sound for healing purposes, both on a one to one level and in a group, and is designed to open up the natural voice using a mixture of games, breathing techniques and meditation. From this training Darren has co-designed Circular Sounds. Much of this work has been informed by working with the composer Nigel Osborne and Opera Circus on summer school projects in Bosnia. As a consequence Darren has been visiting Bosnia since 2005 and has been involved in a number of projects in Mostar, Sarajevo and Srebrenica, most recently Wake Up! a 2 year EU funded partnership between 4 European arts organisations exploring cultural solutions in post conflict regions.
Darren is co-founder and Trustee on the Board of The Edward Starr Charitable Trust (www.starrtrust.com), an organisation created to fund projects globally to help children smile. Since their founding in 2008 the Trust has funded projects in Belarus, Bosnia, India, Israel/Palestine, Peru, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Uganda and the UK and is actively pursuing further partners around the world. Current projects include Slim Peace Teens – a nutrition and healthy lifestyle and female empowerment programme for teenage girls in the Middle East.
In his capacity as Projects Director, Darren is the creator of CHOCS (Children Helping Other Children Smile) the education programme for the Trust, which brings school children and business people together to fundraise and advocate for children’s projects, whilst learning event management and business skills.
Darren will be graduating as a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner at the end of 2011, a healing modality designed to alleviate and release the symptoms of trauma. In 2012 he will also complete his diploma in Personal and Business Coaching.
Darren holds an LRAM teaching certificate from the Royal Academy of Music and a BA Hons in Drama from the University of East Anglia. He is a graduate of the Royal Schools Joint Opera Course and the UK National Opera Studio.
www.darrenabrahams.com
