Opening Night Concert
~ featuring Male Pope, Mared and members of the Urdd Gobaith Cymru Singers
Thursday August 29, 2024, 7:00pm - 9:00pm.
Held at the August Wilson African American Cultural Center, 980 Liberty Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15222
Ticket Required, not covered by a NAFOW day Pass:
Adult ~ $35 / Youth (18 and under or student ID) included in the $15 Youth Weekend Pass.
Mal Pope was born in Brynhyfryd, Swansea, Wales, into a family of teachers. He began learning to play the guitar aged seven and was soon writing songs.
In the early 1970s Pope sent a tape of songs to BBC Radio 1 presenter John Peel, who invited Pope to perform at the BBC. The session resulted in a recording contract with Elton John's record label named The Rocket Record Company. Whilst studying at Christ's College, Cambridge, he spent much of his holidays recording in London. After leaving Cambridge, Pope moved to London and signed to Harvey Goldsmith's management company AMP. He signed a record deal with Larry Page, wrote songs for Cliff Richard and The Hollies, duetted with Bonnie Tyler and Aled Jones, and toured with Art Garfunkel and Belinda Carlisle.
Pope hosted The Mal Pope Show, a late-night music chat show for HTV, in the 1990s, with the show winning a Welsh BAFTA award in 1995. He went on to host a late-night talk show on HTV called Heaven's Sound, which won an award at the New York Film and Television Awards in 2001. Mal also makes for an incredible guest, able to regale audiences with stories of Christmas parties and games of Subbuteo with Elton John, of how his sound has been influenced by the soulfulness of the Deep South, befriending the man who invited Dr. Martin Luther King to Memphis in 1968, and how he came to sing one of the most iconic TV themes of all time, ‘Fireman Sam’. |
Mared is an award-winning singer-songwriter, actor and musician from Llannefydd in North Wales. Her debut bilingual album, 'Y Drefn' was awarded Welsh Album of The Year in 2021. Since then she has performed these songs with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales in Cardiff, sold out several shows across Wales and London, and performed in a prestigious Welsh line-up event in Sony Hall in New York, including a duet with international opera star, Sir Bryn Terfel.
In 2019, Mared joined the West End cast of Les Miserables at the Sondheim Theatre, until lockdown, and rejoined between 2021-22, where she got to enjoy understudying the character of ‘Eponine’ regularly. During the lockdown period, musical theatre singing group, ‘Welsh of the West End’, went viral on YouTube with their videos and coming out of that Mared, and the group, have sang at renowned venues such as The Royal Albert Hall and Hammersmith Apollo. In November 2023, Mared played the lead in an epic, new, original Welsh language musical, ‘Branwen: Dadeni’ on The Donald Gordon stage at the Wales Millenium Centre. The show, which reimagined the myth of Branwen, then toured Wales and played to 11,000 audience members, going down in history as the biggest Welsh language musical of its scale. This year, Mared releases her brand new EP in May, and will enjoy performing in several festivals across the UK, including the National Eisteddfod of Wales, International Showcase at Focus Wales, and a Christmas tour with Welsh of the West End. She is also working on writing two new bilingual musicals, so keep an eye out for developments! |
The 2024 Urdd Gobeith Cymru National Eisteddfod winners will take part in the concert