Esme Lewis, sometimes written as Esmé Lewis, was a Welsh singer. She was a member of the BBC Welsh Singers, and was regularly seen on the television program Gwlad y Gân from 1958 to 1964.
Early life and education
Lewis was born in Caerau, Maesteg.[1] She was performing music from early childhood. She won a Glamorgan Vocal Scholarship to further her musical studies, and graduated from University College, Cardiff, with honours.[2][3][4]
Career
Lewis won her first prize for singing as a three-year-old, and was first heard on BBC at the age of 8.[4] She won a gold medal at the National Eisteddfod, for a duet with Aldwyn Humphreys.[5] She was a soprano singer, and played guitar, harp and lute, while performing traditional and popular songs in both Welsh and English.[6][7] She performed at the Royal Albert Hall and the Royal Festival Hall. She was a frequent singer on the ITV program Gwlad y Gân from 1958 to 1964. In 1961, she presented an episode of Sprigyn o Rosmari, a BBC television series about Welsh folk music.[8] In 1976, she appeared on The Folk Club, on BBC Wales.[9] "I spend so much time entertaining other people that I hardly ever have time to get entertained myself," she told an interviewer in 1959.[4]
Lewis toured with other British and Irish folk musicians in Australia and New Zealand in 1966.[10] In the 1970s she was a senior lecturer at Cardiff College of Education,[3] and toured in the United States as a soloist with a Welsh men's choir.[11][12] She also composed songs and produced records.[3]
Recordings
Welsh Folk Songs with Guitar (1952, with Grace G. Davies)[13]
Folk Songs in Welsh (1965)
Twelve Days of Christmas (1965, with Patrick Shuldham-Shaw)[14]
Oats And Beans And Barley (1966, with Patrick Shuldham-Shaw and a children's choir)[15]
^Patrick Shuldham-Shaw; Esme Lewis; The Choir Of Hampstead Garden Suburb Junior School (1966), Oats And Beans And Barley, Internet Archive, Argo, retrieved 2024-03-29
