Featured Artists
We are fortunate to count amongst our performers many superb musicians; below you can find short biographies for some of our featured artists.

Fiona Firth
Conductor, singing teacher, soprano
Studied singing at Trinity College and Guildhall School of Music and the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatorio in Milan. Her operatic work includes several seasons at the Bayreuth Wagner Festival, English National Opera, Lippstadt Festival, Frankfurt Opera, London Opera Players and Travelling Opera. Concert work has taken her across the UK and Europe. Fiona was Sing Up Area Leader for Bucks and Milton Keynes, promoting and leading singing in schools. She has established and run several vocal groups and co directs Bucks County Youth Choir. She formed The Firth Singers in 2012 following a concert for the Diamond Jubilee and she has become revered as a singing teacher locally and in London accruing many student successes.

Martin Robson
Bass
Studied at Leeds University and the Royal Northern College of Music. He has performed for many major international opera companies and festivals, including the Royal Opera House, English National Opera, Opera di Roma, Opéra National du Rhin, the Edinburgh Festival and Aix-en-Provence Festival. His repertoire includes Masetto and Commendatore, Don Giovanni; Colline, La bohème; Claudio, Agrippina; Sarastro, Die Zauberflöte, and Rocco, Fidelio. Concert work has taken him to America, Japan, China, Korea, New Zealand and throughout Europe with, amongst others, The New London Consort, Musica Antiqua Köln, Les Arts Florissants, and The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Martin is also a fully qualified primary school teacher.

Felicity Davies
Piano
Studied singing and piano at Chetham’s and The Purcell School of Music and Birmingham Conservatoire. She regularly accompanies choirs and is the Music Director for several Buckinghamshire groups. She currently teaches piano and singing at several local schools and has been the valued accompanist for The Firth Singers for 7 years.

Claire Cullen
Soprano
Studied at The Arts Educational School and The Welsh College of Music and Drama. She has performed regularly as a soloist with choirs and Opera Societies and worked professionally in the pop industry at Virgin Records & EMI, often in Los Angeles & New York City. Claire has an eclectic taste in music and she has thrived on learning and performing new solo repertoire for The Firth Singers under the tutelage of Fiona Firth.

Andrew Melvin
Bass and piano
Andrew studied piano at the Royal Academy of Music with Rosemarie Wright and composition at Cambridge and Brunel Universities, gaining a PhD in composition. He has worked for Amersham Music Service (now part of Buckinghamshire Music Trust) since 2001 and is also a freelance composer, arranger, accompanist and piano teacher. Performance venues for his compositions include the Purcell Room and ICA (London), Vienna Musikverein and Tokyo Bunka Kaikan. Andrew regularly works on creative teams for educational singing projects such as ‘Echoes’ at the Royal Albert Hall, ‘Energize’ at Wycombe Swan and the Little Missenden Festival.

Colette Salkeld
Alto and Clarinet
Colette studied clarinet at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Glasgow. On leaving music college she joined the orchestra of Scottish Ballet, shortly followed by Scottish Opera Orchestra and then Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. During this time, she was awarded a Countess of Munster Scholarship to study in Belgium with the late Professor of clarinet, Walter Boeykens, a huge influence on her musically. Having spent a number of years as a professional clarinettist, working orchestrally and giving recitals, Colette qualified as music therapist and now specialises in supporting adoptive families.

Sarah Vandevelde Graham
Mezzo soprano
Sarah sang frequently in her teens and twenties, studying with Barbara Robotham, Jane Irwin and Nick Powell. Her many roles included Leoniei La Vie Parisienne, Cherubino The Marriage of Figaro, Genie The Magic Flute, Mad Margaret Ruddigore and Ruth The Pirates of Penzance. Her concert repertoire included Vivaldi’s Gloria, Handel’s Messiah, Fauré’s Requiem and Rutter’s Feel the Spirit. Despite being offered undergraduate and subsequently postgraduate places at Music Conservatoires, she opted for a politics and modern languages university degree, followed by corporate life, becoming an HR Director and Executive Coach. Sarah is now keen to perform again and has resumed her singing studies with Adriana Festeu.

Freya Firth-Robson
Soprano
Freya currently holds the Soprano Choral Scholarship position at All Saints Church in Fulham, and works full time as a Fundraiser and co-ordinator of the Apprentices Programme for the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestras. She graduated with a first in Music from Durham in 2022, where she was a choral scholar at St John’s College. Over the last five years she has studied with Emma Kirkby, discovering the world of lute songs, but owes most to her mother, Fiona Firth, who has been her teacher since the age of 10. Freya sings with a number of ensembles including I Dodici, which performs sacred repertoire in venues such as St Paul's, Gloucester and Canterbury Cathedrals and Westminster Abbey.

Bohdan Reshetilov
Composer, piano
Bohdan was born in 1992 in Ukraine. He graduated from the Ukrainian National Tchaikovsky Academy of Music specialising in piano, composition, and musicology. He is a Doctor of Philosophy and a member of the National Union of Composers of Ukraine. He has worked in various artistic domains—theatre, film, and IT productions - and he has collaborated with professional symphonic orchestras and ensembles both as a composer and performer including the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and Kyiv Symphony Orchestra and worked for 8 years at the Kyiv National Academic Operetta Theater. His compositions include theatrical, chamber music, soundtracks for films and over 250 arrangements for symphony orchestra.