Full Self Singing

Salwan Cartwright-Shamoon is a singer, pianist and composer from Northern Ireland. He is a music graduate from Queen’s University, Belfast, and recently completed his master’s in Vocal Performance from the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. During Salwan’s time at Queen’s, he performed the role of Aeneas in the university’s production of Handel’s Dido and Aeneas. He also performed as a chorus member for two productions with Northern Ireland Opera (Wagner’s The Flying Dutch Man and Donizetti’s Elixir of Love) and was a choral scholar with St George’s Parish, Belfast. During his time at the conservatoire, Salwan performed the role of the First Priest in Mozart’s Die Zauberflote. And for college Opera Scenes, he played the roles of the Steward in Dove’s Flight; Massetto in Mozart’s Don Giovanni; and Le Duc in Bizet’s La jolie fille de Perth. Salwan has featured as a soloist with St Mary’s Church in Lapworth, England, and recently recorded a solo mass for St Albans Church in Birmingham.

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Prior to the Covid pandemic, Salwan ran in-person singing courses at the Crescent Arts Centre in Belfast, which offered singers of all abilities the opportunity to develop their performance skills and confidence. During the first UK lockdown, Salwan moved his teaching online, and set up the Online Signing Course. This has been a success and to date there have been five online courses featuring participants from around the world, as well as expert teachers and performers who have joined the course to offer performance feedback and insights to participants. In December 2020, Salwan and the participants and teachers from the Online Singing Course released a Christmas music video of a song called Christmas Love which Salwan composed. The song received media attention from the Irish News and was shared by the homeless charity, Crisis, on their Christmas Rocks playlist to an audience of over 110-thousand twitter followers.

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As a composer, Salwan has written for choir, solo voice and vocal groups. He has also composed a range of different classical pieces for solo instruments with piano. In 2018, Salwan composed a short musical, I’ve Got a Story to Tell You, based on important stages of his life journey, which he had the opportunity to perform at Adyashanti's England retreat in Woldingham, Surrey, to a large audience.