Danse Macabre

Performers

Aphrodite Patoulidou (soprano)

Keval Shah (pianist)

Born in Thessaloniki, Greece,  Aphrodite Patoulidou is one of the most interesting rising stars of today. A celebrated soprano, she was one of the first artists to take part in Barbara Hannigan’s Equilibrium Young Artists Initiative as Anne Trulove (The Rake’s Progress) in 2018. Since then, she has worked with orchestras such as Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Gothenburg Symphony, Munich Philharmonic, SWR Sinfonieorchester, Concertgebouw Orchestra, and Danish Radio Symphony among many others.

Her operatic roles also include Elle (La Voix Humaine), Susanna (Le Nozze di Figaro), Belinda (Dido & Aeneas), and Sophie Scholl (Weisse Rose). She has performed in theatres including the Staatsoper Berlin, La Monnaie, Teatro Real Madrid, and the Greek National Opera.

Last season, she made her debut with the Cleveland Orchestra in the States and successfully toured with the London Symphony Orchestra in nine concerts, visiting Europe’s most prestigious halls, singing Mahler’s 4^th Symphony and Vivier’s Lonely Child. Her virtuosic performance of Britten’s Les Illuminations with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin conducted by Dalia Stasevska has been praised by the press. For this performance, Aphrodite created paintings inspired by the ten movements of Britten’s work, which were shared with the audience in printed form.

Keval Shah (2012) is at the forefront of a new generation of collaborative pianists, recognised for the intellectual and artistic originality of his creative vision. Since 2020, he has been Lecturer of Lied at the Sibelius Academy, Helsinki, an appointment which made him the institution’s youngest faculty member, and he now divides his time between running the Academy’s Lied programme and appearing in recital at venues and festivals across Europe, as well as maintaining a busy schedule as an artistic curator, guest professor, and broadcaster.

Highlights of the 2024/2025 season include recitals in Italy, Germany, Denmark, Finland, and the UK, with singers including Fleur Barron, Anna El-Khashem and Jess Dandy, and instrumentalists Sophie Kauer and Laura van der Heijden, as well as the release of a recording with Theodore Platt for the Deutsche Grammophon Rising Stars series. In recent seasons, Keval’s collaborators have included Karita Mattila, Roderick Williams, Erika Baikoff, and Theresa Pilsl, with concerts at the Wigmore Hall, Hugo Wolf Akademie, Heidelberger Frühling, Salzburg Mozarteum, Oxford International Song Festival, and Leeds Lieder Festival.

Keval believes in the power of music, and song in particular, to bridge cultural and social divides, bringing together diverse communities through stimulating and inclusive programming. He is a committed champion of contemporary music and its ability to tell new stories and share fresh perspectives, and is passionate about developing concert experiences which allow a broad repertoire to speak strongly to diverse audiences. He has worked with composers including Kaija Saariaho and Cheryl Frances Hoad, and is currently working with Indian-American composer Reena Esmail to develop a Sanskrit song cycle using texts from the Hindu holy scripture Bhagavad Gita. This new work, Eternity in an hour, performed alongside songs from the European Lied tradition, will be premiered with Jess Dandy at the Oxford International Song Festival in October 2024.

Keval is a laureate of multiple international song competitions including 1^st Prize at the 13^th International Art Song Competition Stuttgart, 2^nd Prize at the Copenhagen Lied Duo Competition, both with Theodore Platt, and winning the Oxford Lieder Young Artist Competition with Michael Mofidian. He was awarded an Edison Fellowship by the British Library, and was made an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music (ARAM) in 2023, for outstanding contribution to the music profession.

Away from the concert platform, Keval regularly presents programmes on BBC Radio 3 and the BBC World Service. In Spring 2022, he hosted a three-part series on song and chamber music, titled ‘The Art of Accompaniment’, and most recently he presented a documentary about the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho for the BBC World Service. Keval is the founder and artistic director of the Sibelius Academy’s Soiva Kieli recital series, and curator of Lied recitals at Helsinki Seriös, Finland’s premier international chamber music series. In June 2024, Keval joined Soile Iskoski, Dawn Upshaw, and Bo Skovhus on the jury of the Mirjam Helin International Singing Competition, the first pianist to be invited to join the jury in the competition’s history.

In addition to teaching at the Sibelius Academy, Keval has been a guest teacher at The Juilliard School, Royal Academy of Music, Royal College of Music, the Royal Danish Academy of Music, the Academy of Music and Opera at Mälardalen University, Sweden, and the Norwegian Academy of Music. In the 2024-2025 season, he will visit the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg, and give a workshop on recital programming for the Hugo Wolf Akademie in Stuttgart.

Keval’s work has been regularly profiled by international media. His concerts have been broadcast on the BBC (Radio 3), Danish National Radio (DRP2), Finnish National Radio (YLE1) and on German radio (SWR2). He has graced the front pages of Rondo magazine and Hufvudstadsbladet, the national Swedish-language newspaper of Finland, and has also had features in Helsingin Sanomat, Finland’s national newspaper, the Finnish fashion magazine Gloria, and in articles for the Finnish Broadcasting Company and the Finnish Cultural Foundation (Tiede & Taide magazine).

Keval studied at Trinity Hall, Cambridge and at the Royal Academy of Music, graduating from both institutions with distinction. He was an Oxford Lieder Young Artist, a Britten-Pears Young Artist, and a scholarship holder of the Imogen Cooper Music Trust.