Alexander Armstrong on Classic FM

Alexander Armstrong will take over as host of Classic FM's flagship daytime show, from 9am to noon on weekdays.

Xander has had regular weekend shows for several years now, adding one hundred thousand to his listener numbers in the last year alone. Tune in to hear him on digital, online, or on a smart speaker, from 9am on Monday 1st June.

Not Now, Bernard and Other Stories

Alexander Armstrong is narrator on the forthcoming album Not Now, Bernard and Other Stories, an irresistible collection of world premiere recordings of music revelling in the magic of childhood memories.

Not Now, Bernard is an all-time classic story by David McKee, set to music by Bernard Hughes with melodic charm and a subversive sense of fun. Alexander Armstrong recounts it along with companion piece Isabel's Noisy Tummy as well as Hughes's The Knight Who Took All Day, which challenges chivalric convention with its subversive story of female empowerment.

The Orchestra of the Swan raise a riot of sound in Malcolm Arnold's Toy Symphony, complete with quail cuckoo, guard's whistle and gloriously irritating toy trumpets. The album's mood darkens in John Ireland's haunting melodrama Annabel Lee, a spine-tingling setting of Edgar Allan Poe's final poem presented here in Bernard Hughes' specially arranged chamber version, before Armstrong breezes through Judith Weirs brilliant Thread!, an early work inspired by the Bayeux Tapestry's cartoonish images.

Not Now Bernard and Other Stories is released on 7th February. It is available from Amazon and all usual sources.

My Music

Alexander Armstrong will take part in the popular lunchtime series My Music with the Orchestra of St John's, at the Wigmore Hall, London W1  on Friday 7th February 2020 at 1pm.

Xander will talk about his life, share opinions, and discuss music that has meant the most to him with journalist Paul Blezard. The pieces are excerpts from:

Bach: Erbarme Dich
Beethoven: 7th Symphony 3rd movt
Dvorak: Serenade for Strings
Mozart: Clarinet Quintet
Britten: The Ash Grove

Tickets are available on this link or from 020 7935 2141.

All Mouth and Some Trousers

Alexander Armstrong will be touring a one-man show in November, called All Mouth And Some Trousers. Tickets for all dates are available on this link.

Expect candid stories, laughter, music and some relief that ‘baring all’ is just a figurative expression.

Known from Armstrong & Miller to Pointless, from Hey Duggee to Classic FM, find out what lurks behind the mere noise.

The dates are as follows.

November 3rd: Coventry

November 4th: Darlington

November 5th: Newcastle Upon Tyne

November 6th: Hull

November 7th: Harrogate

November 9th: Warrington

November 10th: York

November 12th: Aylesbury

November 13th: Croydon

November 14th: Ipswich

November 15th: Worthing

November 17th: Cheltenham

November 18th: Birmingham

November 19th: Salisbury

November 20th: St Albans

November 22nd: Basingstoke

November 23rd: King's Lynn

November 24th: Northampton

Click here for booking details at all venues. 

Two Classic BRIT Award nominations for Alexander Armstrong

The 2018 Classic BRIT Awards nominations have been announced, covering a host of musical talent from the worlds of classical, soundtracks and musicals.

Alexander Armstrong is one of the nominees as best male artist, along with tenor Jonas Kaufman, composer Max Richter, teenage cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason, and Britain's Got Talent-winning pianist Tokio Myers.

Xander's album In A Winter Light is also nominated as Classic FM Album of the Year, voted for by Classic FM listeners.

The ceremony will take place at London’s Royal Albert Hall on June 13th, and will be hosted by Alexander Armstrong and Myleene Klass. Good luck, Xander!

Alexander Armstrong: In A Winter Light on Sky

Following the release of his first Christmas album In A Winter Light, Alexander Armstrong will take centre stage on Sky Arts to perform his favourite festive songs.

The programme's first broadcast will be on Monday 4th December at 9pm. Repeats will follow in the days to come, so keep an eye out for them!

It's Christmas - Live!

Alexander Armstrong is one of the stars who will appear in It's Christmas - Live! for Sky One and Sky Arts, to be recorded at the Royal Albert Hall on Thursday, December 7th.

Also taking part in the concert, which will get its first showing at 8pm on Saturday 23rd December on Sky One, are Chrissie Hynde, Fleur East, Holly Johnson, Jona Lewie, Marc Almond, Melanie C, Nadine Coyle, Ricky Wilson,Shakin Stevens, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Tom Chaplin and The Vamps, plus more acts to be announced. It will be hosted by Jason Manford.

Alexander Armstrong on tour

Following the release of his third solo album at the end of November, Alexander Armstrong will be touring in 2018.

The dates are as follows, with tickets going on general sale on 15th September.

21 May	Birmingham	22 May	Sheffield
23 May	Gateshead	25 May	Glasgow
26 May	Manchester	27 May	Liverpool
29 May	Nottingham	30 May	Southend-on-Sea
31 May	London	2 June	Cambridge
3 June	Brighton	4 June	Cardiff
6 June	Bristol	7 June	Bournemouth
8 June	Oxford	11 June	Northampton

In A Winter Light

Alexander Armstrong has announced details of his third solo and first Christmas album, In A Winter Light.

Xander said:

Christmas music is so important to us, it’s such a central part of how we embrace the festive season, I kind of need Christmas music – you don’t just listen to it, you kind of live through it and build your Christmases on it.

What do you think Christmas would be like without any music? I mean I daresay you could possibly still find some joy in an old mince pie or something, but just imagine if you took away all the music. There’d be no carols, no Bing, no more boys of the NYPD choir, no more “it’s Chriiiiiiiiiistmaaaaaaas”, now that really would be a bleak midwinter. The truth is we haven’t got time to hang about in December so we use our favourite Christmas music to take us straight to where we want to be: right at the happy heart of every Christmas we’ve loved. 

The track listing of the album, to be released on 24th November, is:

1. Angels in a Winter Light (Prologue - instrumental)
2. White Winter Hymnal
3. The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire)
4. This Glorious Morrow (feat. The Choir of New College, Oxford)
5. Let it Snow (feat. trebles of The Choir of New College, Oxford)
6. I Still Believe in Christmas
7. O Holy Night (feat. trebles of The Choir of New College, Oxford)
8. Little Girl Blue (feat. Jools Holland)
9. Girl in the Dark (instrumental interlude)
10. Silent Night (feat. The Squadronaires)
11. There is no Rose
12. Winter Wonderland (feat. The Squadronaires)
13. In the Bleak Midwinter
14. Bethlehem Down
15. A Spotless Rose (feat. The Choir of New College, Oxford)
16. Angels in a Winter Light (Epilogue - instrumental)

Having spent years performing in choirs, Xander’s beloved musical heritage is on full, glorious display on In A Winter Light, recorded with the City of Prague Orchestra, abetted by the Choir of New College, Oxford, the RAF Squadronaires big band and Jools Holland. It can be pre-ordered from all usual sources.

The Boisdale Music Awards

Nominations for the 2017 Boisdale Music Awards have been announced; Alexander Armstrong has been nominated as Best Male Singer.

 

The ceremony, hosted by Jools Holland, will take place on Wednesday September 13th at Boisdale of Canary Wharf. Other nominees include blues legend and veteran broadcaster Paul Jones (lifetime achievement award) Ginger Baker (Best Jazz Instrumentalist) Rebecca Ferguson (Best Jazz Singer) Imelda May (Best Female Singer), and Mike Batt (Outstanding Contribution to British Music).

Congratulations, Xander!

Classic FM's Ultimate Chart

This year the radio station Classic FM is 25 years old. As part of their celebrations, they have published their Ultimate Chart of the 300 best-selling classical albums since 1992.

A Year Of Songs, Alexander Armstrong's debut solo album, reached number 57 in the chart. This is particularly impressive given that it was only released in 2015, and was up against albums released many years if not decades ago. Congratulations, Xander!

The Full Works

Alexander Armstrong regularly presents shows on Classic FM at the weekend. In week beginning 11th September, he will additionally be at the helm of three shows in The Full Works strand, nightly at 8pm.

• On Monday 11th September the theme is Autumn in the Air, with composers including Vaughan Williams,  Elgar and Holst. 
• Tuesday the 12th has the theme of Alexander's A-Listers, and features Richard Strauss,  Beethoven, and Mozart.
• And finally Wednesday 13th's show, themed around Durham, is centred on Jon Lord's epic Durham Concerto Also included is contemporary choral composer Will Todd.

Classic FM is on digital, on 100-102FM, or you can listen online.

Peter and the Wolf, and other animals

The release date for Alexander Armstrong's album of animal-themed classical pieces for children with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra has now been confirmed.

Xander said:

It’s very exciting to be moving onto a narration project after having done quite a lot of narration in my role as an actor and as presenter. But also using my experience as a solo singer; I’ve had a musical side and an acting side, and I see them both as using the same sort of discipline. A sort of musicality is involved in narration, it seems like a very logical thing for me to be doing.

 To be released on Friday September 29th, the album will include Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf, Ogden Nash's poems for Saint-Saëns' Carnival of the Animals, and Rawsthorne's Practical Cats. It can be ordered at Amazon or all usual sources, or downloaded on iTunes. Alternatively you can listen to it on Spotify.

Animals, Cats, Peter, and the Wolf

Alexander Armstrong has been recording an album with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, in which he narrates several pieces of classical music.

Sergei Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf tells a children's story while the orchestra illustrates it. A young boy, Peter, and his friends, the farmyard animals, capture a big grey wolf that comes out of the forest.

Carnival of the Animals, by Saint-Saëns, is a humorous musical suite of 14 movements, each representing a different animal or animals. In 1949, Ogden Nash wrote a set of humorous verses to accompany each movement.

20th Century British composer Alan Rawsthorne wrote orchestral pieces to accompany poems from Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, the same poems that inspired Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats. This composition has only been recorded once before, in the 1950s.

The album comes out in the autumn, and Xander will be taking part in a live performance of the pieces in Liverpool.

Alexander Armstrong wins Silver Clef Award

Alexander Armstrong has been announced as the winner of the PPL Classical Silver Clef Award for 2017. The prestigious O2 Silver Clef Awards are presented by music therapy charity Nordoff Robbins, which does life-changing work with people with disabilities and illnesses.

The award, along with others to Dame Shirley Bassey, Phil Collins, Blondie, Emeli Sande, Mumford & Sons, Anne-Marie, Nile Rodgers and Pete Tong, will be presented on Friday 30th June at the Grosvenor Park Hotel, Park Lane, London. Congratulations, Xander!

The Sound of Music Live nominated for RTS Award

The Sound of Music Live, starring Kara Tointon, Julian Ovenden, Alexander Armstrong, and Katherine Kelly, has been nominated for a Royal Television Society Award, in the Live Event category. The other nominees are Stand Up To Cancer and the BBC's coverage of the Centenary of the Battle of the Somme.

The Awards Ceremony is on Tuesday 21st March. We wish The Sound of Music Live well.

Third album to come from Alexander Armstrong

Following the success of 2015's A Year Of Songs, which reached number 6 in the album charts and topped the classical charts for some months, and Upon A Different Shore, which was released in 2016 and peaked at number 8 in the charts, Alexander Armstrong will begin work on his third album this week.

Xander made the announcement in an interview with the Chronicle while in Newcastle cutting the ceremonial ribbon on a new wheelchair lift at the entrance of the Lit and Phil, the largest independent library outside London, where he chairs the fundraising committee.

Alexander Armstrong will 'duet' with Dame Vera Lynn

I've posted previously about the forthcoming concert to celebrate Dame Vera Lynn's 100th birthday. Dame Vera will also be releasing a new album, making her (it is thought) the first centenarian to release a music album.

The album will feature Dame Vera's original vocals, accompanied by new orchestral arrangements. She will be joined by British singers including Alexander Armstrong on White Cliffs of Dover, Alfie Boe on We'll Meet Again, and Aled Jones on As Time Goes By.

Vera Lynn 100 will be released on 17th March. It can be pre-ordered from Amazon and all other usual outlets.

Alexander Armstrong on Songs of Praise, 29th January

Alexander Armstrong will perform on Songs of Praise on Sunday, 29th January at 3pm on BBC1.

The Chapel Choir of Royal Holloway College will join Xander in Stanford's lovely Nunc Dimittis in G. The programme as a whole marks Chinese New Year.

Alexander Armstrong to appear in Dame Vera Lynn's 100th Birthday Concert

Renowned wartime singer Dame Vera Lynn will reach her 100th birthday in March this year. To celebrate this milestone for Dame Vera, known as the Forces' Sweetheart during World War 2 for her uplifting performances of songs like We'll Meet Again, she will be holding a charity concert showcasing some of the best in British talent.

The concert, on the 18th of March at the London Palladium, is in aid of The Dame Vera Lynn Children’s Charity and will feature over 25 of the country’s most beloved singers, dancers, actors, West End stars and TV personalities. Accompaniment will be provided by the revered Royal Air Force Dance Orchestra, The Squadronaires, a very fitting tribute to Mr Harry Lewis, Dame Vera Lynn’s husband, who was a founding member.

Among those performing are Alexander Armstrong, Blake, and Hayley Westenra. Other acts will be announced over the weeks to come, but a once in a lifetime experience is promised. Tickets are available online.