Oskar McCarthy is an actor-singer performing new music and old music in new ways. Highlights from the past year include debuting with Birmingham Opera Company as The Presenter in Tippett’s New Year and commissioning and premiering Lines, Letters and Disinformation, a music-theatre piece for baritone and electronics by Laura Bowler, performed at Britten Studio, Snape, and Café OTO. He has performed at Kings Place, Southbank Centre and Bold Tendencies with Festival Voices, the contemporary vocal ensemble of which he is co-Artistic Director, and recently recorded Meredith Monk’s Realm Variations with Phaedra Ensemble.
Previous career highlights include Eight Songs for a Mad King with Red Note Ensemble, creating the roles of Simon Hughes in Robert Reid Allan and Gareth Mattey’s Bermondsey, 1983 at Tête-à-Tête and Adam in Bertie Baigent’s Paradise Lost at Shipwright, and performing Edmund in Shakespeare’s King Lear at the Grange Festival. He has devised new music theatre works with ERRATICA, Rufus Isabel Elliott, Zeo Fawcett and Alex Groves, premiered and recorded pieces by Ion Marmarinos and Robin Holloway, and appeared at Longborough Festival Opera, Scottish Opera and Waterperry Opera Festival.
Oskar was a member of the inaugural VOICEBOX programme specialising in contemporary vocal performance, delivered by Juliet Fraser, is a graduate of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland opera school and the University of Cambridge, and has studied Lecoq technique, clown and mime at the International School of Dramatic Corporeal Mime in Paris.