Megan Cronin
Megan Cronin was born and educated in Canberra and received her earliest musical training singing with Judith Clingan’s Canberra Children’s Choir, playing oboe in the Canberra Youth Orchestra and at the Canberra School of Music.
She has sung with some of Australia’s finest vocal ensembles, including the Australian Chamber Singers under Michael Noone and Sydney Chamber Choir with Nicholas Routley and more recently with ACO voices at the Sydney Festival.
Apart from her busy life as a mother of three and member of Pastance, Megan is also an experienced soloist. She has sung a number of dramatic roles, including filia in Carissimi’s oratorio Jephte, lead roles in three music theatre works by Canberra composer Judith Clingan and in 1993 the leading role in the early Mozart opera, “Lo Sposo Deluso” for the Mostly Mozart festival at the Sydney Opera House. In 1997 she performed in a number of works at the Australian Women Composers Festival. In 2000 she was a soprano soloist in the Monteverdi Vespers and as guest artist with the Jacaranda Consort.
Megan also teaches music at Northbridge Public School and teaches singing at workshops and from her home.
Performing as Pastance
Pastance came together in 1993 to perform mediaeval and Renaissance music. Based in Sydney, the ensemble has reached the early-music fraternity and a wide public, from folk festivals and formal concerts to schools, corporate feasts and open-air markets.
Sit Down Beside Me
In its inimitable style, Pastance again brings together music from the folk traditions and the early music world.
A Valley Fair
Pastance's then most recent offering is a delightful collection of traditional, original and early music for Celtic harp, recorders and voices.
Joy
Joy names the intent behind much of this music: carols of piety, the longing of Landini and Machaut, and Hildegard von Bingen’s soaring beauty. The collection shows how song shaped everyday life in the Middle Ages.
Megan Cronin also appears on
Lady Sings the Viol
The concept behind Lady Sings the Viol was a CD of “covers”: five singers, alone and together, take songs from 1300 to the present, from Piaf and Schubert to John Paul Jones and Elena Kats-Chernin.