About me

The background

I enjoy (most of the time) a varied career as a singer, composer, and record producer. It all began with violin lessons when I was six years old. I studied the violin at the Royal Academy of Music Junior Department before reading music at Trinity College, Cambridge on a choral scholarship and finishing my studies as a postgraduate singer at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. I rather naively thought that was it and I’d walk into lots of work but then followed years of auditions, working my way up from the chorus to covering (understudying) and finally to my first roles.

Record Producing and Composing

I met my future partner for life and work whilst at Cambridge and together we became Morgan Pochin. We started in TV with credits including Armstrong and Miller (we were at Cambridge with the Armstrong half), The Kumars at No.42 and According to Bex (BBC1). We produced and arranged Katherine Jenkin’s debut album Premiere,  Songs Without Words (Classic FM), Alfie Boe’s Bring Him Home and Alfie, Joe McElderry’s Classic and Classic Christmas (Decca). Notice I haven’t mentioned Classic Rock which sadly the world wasn’t ready for – you may have studiously ignored it in the wire baskets outside your local garage.

We recently wrote the soundtrack for our first feature film, First Night which was released in September, 2011, James appears on the big screen and I’m the singing voice of one of the actresses, the one who gets her kit off . Alfie Boe dubs another of the actors, …he gets his kit off too, the actor that is, not Alfie. We also got to work on another film last year, not out yet, but directed by Dustin Hoffman and called Quartet. We are currently writing a new orchestral piece for children written in collaboration with the fantastic children’s author, Michael Rosen, to be premiered in May 2014 at the Brighton Festival .

Venezia and Singing

Four years ago, whilst working as a jobbing opera singer and writing music for tv, I sent a demo of songs to Universal which James and I had written and recorded. They loved the songs but said they had just signed a blonde soprano who was very young and beautiful and although she was currently a student, they thought she was a marketers dream and if we would allow her to use the songs, we could produce the album. She was Katherine Jenkins. We’re not proud. We were very happy to give her the songs and produce the album. I was right to be pragmatic, it opened doors for me with other record companies, work for us as producers and a year later, I was signed to record my debut album, Venezia, with Sony BMG, released in 2006. Classic FM made it their Record Of The Week and my voice even inspired renowned chocolatiers Hotel Chocolat to design and name the “Juliette” chocolate. Brilliant!

My singing career has led me to perform with many orchestras all over the world, including the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Philharmonia,, CBSO and Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. Since having the children and establishing Morgan Pochin Music, I no longer work in opera but I love the variety of sharing a stage with musicians as wide ranging as Sir Simon Rattle and Meatloaf! I’ve also sung on the soundtracks to Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and Star Wars- the Phantom Menace and I regularly sing the national anthem at Wembley, Twickenham and the Millenium Stadiums.  I performed at the United Nations MDG Awards launch in Canada and have been the soloist in the BBC Last Night of the Proms with the BBC Philharmonic in a live television link up from Salford for the last 3 years. You can also hear me on:

The Sky Shall be our Roof - Vaughan Williams songs accompanied by Iain Burnside (Gramophone magazine’s Editor’s choice), Classical Voices, Classical Greats, The Classical Album 2009 and Classical Voices 2010 as well as First Night (Sony Classical) and Poetry Serenade (Signum)

Enough about me. My talented other half is:

James Morgan

He started out in the opera world conducting at Glyndebourne, ENO, English Touring Opera and Raymond Gubbay Ltd. He soon branched out from opera and has conducted and recorded many of the UK’s leading orchestras, including the Royal Philharmonic, Philharmonia and London Philharmonic Orchestras. Abroad, he works regularly with the Danish National Chamber Orchestra and City of Prague Philharmonic amongst others. Specialising in contemporary music, including world premieres at the South Bank and the Barbican, his repertoire varies widely from renaissance polyphony to arena pop concerts, with artists as varied as Alfie Boe, Jamie Cullum, Andrea Bocelli, Katie Melua and the BBC Singers, for whom he is a regular guest conductor.  This is all when he isn’t working with me as part of Morgan Pochin or on Dad duty which brings me to:

Domestic Diva

Our greatest achievement in life is becoming parents to our daughter and 2 year old twins. It has taken years of fertility treatment and rather more money than I care to mention but we now have the family we always dreamt of.  I was nicknamed the Domestic Diva by the Daily Mail after they published my diary which detailed my mad attempts to juggle my career with my family – as well as making my own concert dresses and growing my own vegetables – with varying degrees of success!

Hope you enjoy the blog.