Lunchtime legend

A real treat of a sunny lunchtime, when I happened to have a Tuesday off, was a quick jaunt over to  Greenwhich where my friend Steven East was singing at the beautiful chapel inside the grounds of the Old Royal Naval College.

View across the river to Canary Wharf

Steve is a student at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. As campuses go, it doesn't come much more impressive, Trinity Laban having taken over a wing of the Old Royal Naval College overlooking the Thames. The chapel was originally designed by Sir Christopher Wren but its interior was completely recreated following a fire in 1779. Now it's a temple to Greek neoclassicism and an extra special location for a recital.

The chapel ceiling

Sitting in the pew waiting for Steve to appear there was time to admire the surroundings, from the vast painting behind the altar to the ocean-themed marble floor.

The original altarpiece painting by Benjamin West

 Naval themes underfoot

Steve arrived and took a bow with his accompanist, Alexandra Kremakova, a pianist from Bulgaria and a fellow student at Trinity Laban. She contributed a solo piece, too, a furiously fast piece that involved her, at one point, banging the top of the piano with her hand. "The directions were there in the music, so that's what I did," she told us afterwards. Intriguing.

Steve takes a bow

Steve's programme included a series of pastoral songs by George Butterworth, a Purcell drinking song (yes, really) and a sublime Russian section of Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky pieces. With his gorgeously rich bass baritone voice filling the sacred space most divinely, all were so grateful to have ventured out.