Forever Tenors made up of Adam Lacey and Rob Durkin, is one of the most exciting classical crossover duos to emerge in the UK. The friends have recently recorded their debut album “Surrender” and have a tour set for the Fall. Learn more about them before you watch them live.
Natasha Barbieri: When did music first go from being a hobby to a dream?
Adam: Well, when I was a child I remembered falling in love with musicals after watching Joseph, I think that ignited the spark which led to me singing in my local church choir from around the age of 4/5 and it has been a passion of mine ever since. I suppose I turned professional in 2008 and haven’t looked back since, mainly as I haven’t time to! I have been doing this a fair few years now but there are no signs of things slowing down any time soon. We are becoming busier and busier every day with Forever Tenors.
Rob: Yes, I started singing really young too. I think I was really fortunate actually to go to a good school that took music seriously. They used to do a test called the “Bentley Test” and singled me out for singing lessons and a music scholarship from about eight years old, I think. I actually did my Grade 8 singing at 11 years old as a Soprano (treble), would you believe?! This solid foundation is probably what took me to Cambridge University, where I also had a Choral Scholarship and that’s where singing kind of crossed over the professional boundary for me as I started doing lots of paid work.
Natasha Barbieri: There’s always that fight between pursuing what you love or settling for a ‘safe’ career. You made a very brave choice in the midst of a pandemic to choose music. Can you tell us more about that journey?
Adam: Haha! I’ve been doing music full time for quite a while, I don’t think I could settle for a safe career now, but I think Rob might have a different answer…when I lured him over to the dark side haha
Rob: Yes! I literally quit my job in the middle of the pandemic when Adam and I established Forever Tenors although doing music full time has been part of my life plan since the very beginning. I was really struggling with a difficult job at the time and was very seriously considering a career change anyway, but it was really Adam’s support and encouragement that made me do it. What could be better than working with your best mate, right?! Ask me again in a couple of weeks once we’ve started travelling together again…
Adam: What do you mean…haha
Natasha Barbieri: When did you both meet and what were your first impressions of each other?
Adam: We first met working together on the musical Evita! Rob was actually Musical Director for that show and I was playing the part of Juan Peron. We hit it off straight away. It was literally a laugh a minute when we were together and it didn’t take us long after that to become best mates.
Rob: Yes. It was actually a bit embarrassing. I started trying to teach Adam his song at first rehearsal but it didn’t take me long to realize that he already knew it and he had done a number of other professional musical engagements and as a result wasn’t going to need much teaching! So, I guess my first impression was “Oh! This guy can really sing!!”. But yeah, as Adam said, the relationship was really forged together in the pub after rehearsals. We both have really similar personalities and we just clicked immediately.
Natasha Barbieri: Prior to forming ‘Forever Tenors’ did you perform together onstage?
Rob: Yes of course. We’ve both done a lot of singing at weddings over the years as it’s a reliable and steady source of income and not long after meeting, we started to team up for those wherever possible. That’s when we really started singing together and realized how much we enjoyed it.
Adam: Yes. Then Rob started to deputize (stand in for) my old singing partner Jon (Christos) when there were gigs that he couldn’t make and that’s when we first got together on stage. The other time we did a show together before that, I was the only one on the stage – Rob was sat in the orchestra pit frantically waving his baton at me!!
Natasha Barbieri: What have been some of your favorite highlights as individual artists?
Adam: One of my favorite experiences has to have been directing the Lion King concert in Washington, even though it didn’t involve me singing! Also, performing at Etihad Stadium in front of 55,000 people during an opening ceremony was very terrifying but also very rewarding. A final one worth a mention was working on White Christmas with the guy who got me into performing, Mr. Darren Day.
Rob: I immediately think back to when I was a child and the Professional Tour of Oliver the Musical. This is basically what got me into performing and while all my friends were at school, I was running round on set singing on dancing. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the musical Oliver but the set really is like a big playground! More recently, I’d have to say singing alongside Adam with the legend that is Russel Watson probably tops it.
Natasha Barbieri: Tell us a little bit about your sound?
Rob: I’m glad you called it “our sound” because it’s something we’ve worked really hard to create and we do believe it is really distinctive. What we basically do is fuse modern popular music with classical and we do this mainly by taking modern songs and orchestrating them for a full orchestra. Sometimes it’s the other way around and we take a classical piece and combine it with something more modern. We do all the orchestrations and arrangements ourselves which takes a massive amount of time but means it is ultimately our own music we are singing and I think we both find that a really rewarding process. We also have an incredible musical director in the team Mr. Jonathan Mitra who is fab.
Adam: Yes, I’ve always felt classical music can be a bit “stuffy” or difficult to access, particularly for younger people. But we what we try to do is put a modern spin on it and give it more general appeal. The other thing we love to do is re-imagine popular songs with Italian lyrics – it’s the language of love and seems to work really well.
Natasha Barbieri: What are some of the things (either in song selection or production) that are very important to you as a duo and that you wanted to feature on your album?
Rob: The album was all about giving people a taste of what we do in our live shows and we conceived it when we were unable to perform live. It’s a great snapshot of our style and genre and there’s some of our personalities in the music too.
Adam: Yes. We decided to call the album “Surrender” and the title song is all about combining the old Neapolitan classic “Torna a Surriento” with the more modern Elvis tune “Surrender”. When we are performing it live, we go to town and have a bit of a “battle” with Rob pretending to be Pavarotti and me swinging my hips and doing my best Elvis impression. Hopefully people can imagine some of that banter when they are listening to the recording too.
Natasha Barbieri: When it comes to your individual voices, would you say you follow any specific method or approach? (Bel Canto, Swedish School, etc)
Adam: I was never trained in any particular style when I was younger, I just had a voice. More recently, I trained at Leeds Conservatoire and much of the work I did there was based around Bel Canto.
Rob: Yes, we have both explored loads of techniques over the years, but at the end of the day it’s about what works for you personally. I started out singing Bel Canto with my earlier teachers and in more recent years I’ve become quite interested in Estill which has some really useful science for helping to understand how the voice actually works and I use that a lot when teaching. When I sing though, I try to forget all that and rely on practice and experience!
Natasha Barbieri: In your opinion who have been some of the finest tenors, including any that may be less well-known?
Adam: Freddie Mercury who maybe isn’t normally at the forefront of people’s minds but he was just an incredible artist whom I have always admired, but if I has to go for a more classical tenor I do quite like the versatility of Alfie Boe and what he has done for the genre of classical crossover in recent years. Also, I do have to give a shout out to tenor Jon Christos whom as mentioned I worked with for many years and I will always admire his voice.
Rob: Yes, Jon has an amazing voice and he’s probably one of my favorites too, now that you mention it. In terms of the really well-known tenors, I’d always mention Mario Lanza because of his pure passion. He really is the godfather of classical crossover and even Pavarotti who came later was following in his well-trodden footsteps. It’s just a shame he didn’t live longer. My grandad on my mother’s side sadly also died very young at 50 years old so I never got chance to meet him but I am told he adored Mario Lanza and all of his “records”. He would go listen to them on his own and is the only one I know of in the family who had that love for opera. I’ve always wondered if that is where my passion for it came from.
Natasha Barbieri: When it comes to your voice type, what do you think makes it unique and special?
Adam: That’s a difficult question because I don’t see myself as special, I am just a guy who sings and hopefully people like what I do even if my kids do love it when I have vocal rest days! But I think if there is anything unique about the way I sing which seems to come back from audiences is an ability to convey the meaning of the words which I attribute to my years in musical theatre. It’s the lyrical quality of my voice that I believe has differentiated me as an artist.
Rob: Yes, similarly for me, I’m all about singing with passion because that’s what I think differentiates the most successful crossover singers and makes their sound memorable. When I’m teaching, I spend most of the time working with students on “phrasing”. They can usually already sing the notes when they arrive but there are literally millions of different ways you can put across any phrase and singing a phrase with true passion requires really careful thought and lots of practice. My early teachers basically used to repeat “more legato, more legato” until it became second nature and I think that has served me well because that is the basis for making any phrase sound really musical.
Natasha Barbieri: It is encouraging to see some live shows opening up again and you both have planned out several dates. How do you feel about the opportunity to be back in front of a live audience?
Rob: It’s just brilliant. We have waited so long and we’ve filled the time with so much hard work: recording, rehearsing, designing a new show and planning our tour. But there is absolutely no substitute for live performance.
Adam: Yes, we have had our first couple of gigs now, and the energy level in everything else we are doing has just gone up another notch. It gives you a confidence boost because having an audience and seeing their reaction reminds you how good you are and gives you the encouragement you need to carry on working hard back in the office too.
Find the Forever Tenors tour schedule available on their website.
