Scholarships
Four free scholarship places are available to first-time applicants to the Charles Wood Singers. As in previous years, the William Lauder Scholarship will be awarded to a singer from Northern Ireland, while the other three places are open to singers from both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Successful recipients will join the Charles Wood Singers free of charge.
The William Lauder Scholarship
This annual scholarship was set up in memory of founder member and former Honorary Treasurer of the Summer School, William Lauder. Open to young singers from Northern Ireland applying to join the Charles Wood Singers for the first time, it enables the holder to participate in the Charles Wood Summer School week free of charge, including an individual singing lesson with internationally renowned vocal coach, Paul Farrington.
The 2023 winner of the William Lauder Scholarship is Rosie Cameron
Rosie Cameron
Rosie is a 21-year-old soprano from Rostrevor, County Down. She has just completed her Bachelor of Music degree at Maynooth University, graduating with First-Class honours. In the final year of her degree, she specialised in Vocal Performance as well as completing a dissertation on Ralph Vaughan Williams’ first opera Hugh the Drover. In September, she will continue her academic studies in Maynooth as she begins the MA in Performance and Musicology.
Rosie began studying voice in 2017 under the tutelage of Julie Beattie in Warrenpoint and continues her vocal studies with Kathryn Smith in Maynooth. Rosie’s first step in choral singing came from her involvement with the Ulster Youth Choir and Ulster Youth Chamber Choir (now National Youth Choir of Northern Ireland). She performed with the Chamber Choir at the 2018 BBC Proms in the Park at Titanic Slipways which was broadcast on BBC1 and she has performed with the Ulster Youth Choir in the Ulster Hall as part of their 20th Anniversary year.
Thanks to the strong tradition of choral singing in Maynooth, Rosie has gained experience with numerous ensembles over the last three years. She has performed with the Maynooth University Chamber Choir in several concerts and as part of the ‘Christmas at Home’ programme on RTÉ in 2020, as well as regularly performing with the Maynooth University Choral Society in performances of Fauré’s Requiem and Haydn’s Creation. At the 2021 and 2022 Maynooth Carol Services, Rosie was selected to perform the ‘O Holy Night’ solo in the stunning surroundings of St Patrick’s College Chapel which remains an extremely prominent event in her career so far. Having developed an interest in Plainchant during her undergraduate studies, Rosie is also a member of the Schola Gregoriana Maynooth, an all-female ensemble that specialises in plainchant performance.
“The William Lauder Scholarship is exactly the sort of thing Northern Ireland needs: financial incentive for young people to engage in Church Music. The Scholarship allows anyone, regardless of background, to participate in what I believe to be NI’s greatest annual week of music-making, and I am so grateful to the board of the Charles Wood Festival for granting it to me in 2017.”
“I spent my first year in the Charles Wood Singers as the William Lauder Scholar. The opportunity provided me with access to music that I had never sung before. The choral tradition became an incredibly important part of my musical education, and I was heavily involved with cathedral music for the three years that followed. The Charles Wood Festival is a must for any young singer from our country.”
The Theo Saunders Scholarship
The Theo Saunders Scholarship enables a young organist to attend the Festival week free of charge, working alongside the Charles Wood Singers under the guidance of the Artistic Director.
The 2023 winner of the Theo Saunders Scholarship is Tingshuo Yang
Tingshuo Yang
Tingshuo is a young pianist, composer and organist based in Luxembourg. Born in 2004 in Shanghai, China, Tingshuo has shown significant talents and capabilities in music. He joined the Conservatoire de la Ville de Luxembourg (CVL) in 2013, and has been studying piano with Prof. Jean Muller. At the CVL he broadened his interests not only in classical performance, but also in composition, violin, improvisation and organ. He was the winner of annual award of “Prix du meilleur laureat” in 2019.
Tingshuo has shown natural talent, intuitive love, and insatiable curiosity about music since his childhood. He had his first piano lesson at age four, was admitted to the Royal College of Music Junior Department in London in 2012 aged eight, passed the DipABRSM aged 10 and the LRSM piano performance certificate 2 years later, making him one of the youngest LRSM certificate holders in the world. In 2021, he attained his ARCO organ diploma.
He was the winner of 4th International Composition Competition ‘Artistes en Herbe’ in 2017, Gold Medal in the Luxembourg Concours pour Jeunes Solistes in 2017, Prix 88 Golden Keys in 2018, and was awarded the Music Scholarship by Eton College, United Kingdom in 2018. In 2020, he came runner up in the Composition Competition of the Royal College of Organists. In 2022, he was awarded an organ scholarship and a place to read music at St John’s College, Cambridge, starting in September 2023.
Tingshuo made his debut with the Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra in April 2019. In January 2020 he was invited by the Luxembourg embassy in Berlin to be the soloist at the opening concert of the series “Young Luxembourgish Classical Talents”. In November 2022, he was invited to play a solo recital as part of Esch2022, European Capital of Culture events. Now he’s launching his new milestone, to record a two-set CD album conveying the freshness and energy of Bach’s six keyboard partitas.
“I benefited hugely from the experience of being organ scholar for the Charles Wood Summer School in two consecutive years. It was inspirational to work with musicians of the calibre of David Hill and Philip Scriven, and I also made some lifelong friends.”