Royal Over-Seas League (ROSL)

A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare, a staple of the school english literature curriculum for decades, is one of the most well-loved Shakespeare plays of the last two centuries and it's coming to ROSL on Friday 5 July. 

On Monday evening, our 2017 Annual Music Competition ensemble prizewinners the B-L Piano took to the stage at the Esplanade Recital Studio, Singapore, for an evening of contemporary music that The Straits Times called an "amazing spectacle of these two truly virtuoso players performing death-defying pianistic feats in tandem and with such apparent ease."

Last night saw the Vocal Section Final of this year's Annual Music Competition take place at Over-Seas House. The four competitors were in fine form, treating us to a varied programme of Mozart, Sibelius, Walton, and Butterworth. 

As is tradition with all past Chairmen, ROSL has commissioned a portrait of Sir David Brewer to remember all that he did for the organisation during his tenure as Chairman. 

The restoration of the historic ROSL art collection continues and we are pleased that when the club reopens we will have the restored portrait of Sir Evelyn Wrench by Oswald Birley back on the wall. 

Finally! The 2020 Annual Music Competition has made a triumphant return to ROSL, following a hiatus of more than six months. Last night, the Mixed Ensembles Section Final took place in a socially-distanced Princess Alexandra Hall, where trombone quartet Slide Action took home not one, but two prizes. 

On Sunday 16 June 2019 SongPath will hold its inaugural celebration of the restorative powers of walking, talking and music making in the wonderful landscapes of South Cumbria. 

Tired of the crush to get home everyday? Take shelter from the rush hour with our new concert series, launching on 2 April. 

Last night marked the half way point of our Annual Music Competition with our Strings Section Final. Despite the freezing weather, five musicians battled through the snow to perform for us. The evening gave us true variety, highlighting the breadth of instruments in the strings family with performances on harp, cello, viola, guitar, and violin. 

In the latest Section Final of the 2020 AMC, last night it was the turn of four Strings soloists to take to the stage and compete for the £5,000 section prize and a place in the Gold Medal Final in June. 

With our four soloists chosen the 2020 AMC Gold Medal Final, it is now the turn of the ensembles to take centre stage. Last night, four string ensembles took to the Princess Alexandra Hall stage to compete for the £10,000 Section Final win and a chance to perform at the Gold Medal Final. 

Tuesday evening will see our Annual Music Competition (AMC) return to the Princess Alexandra Hall with the first of our Section Finals, for Wind and Brass. Now in its 66^th year, the AMC will see some of the best talent from young musicians around the Commonwealth compete for our Gold Medal prize. This is your opportunity to see the ROSL AMC 2018 winner first and get a glimpse into the fantastic future stars of the classical music world.

To celebrate the opening of ROSL's latest exhibition, Drawn to Architecture, this week, Overseas spoke to one of the exhibiting artists in the latest issue. Anne Desmet RA, tells us about the overlap between the two disciplines of art and architecture and how it has influenced her work. 

Join us at 11am BST on 11 August for our latest webinar, which explores the impact of Japan - its culture, traditions of craftsmanship and encounters with Western traders - on European interiors and the decorative and performing arts. 

As the dust settles on another successful concert series at the Edinburgh Fringe, we take a look back at some of the memorable moments from the past two weeks. 

Last night we had our final solo Section Final for this year's Annual Music Competition, and this week it was the turn of the pianists. For the second week we had five extraordinary young musicians vying for the chance to win £5,000 and a place in our Gold Medal Final. 

The last of the solo Section Finals of this year's Annual Music Competition took place yesterday evening. A capacity crowd filled the Princess Alexandra Hall to listen to four talented young pianists compete for the Keyboard Section prize of £5,000 and a chance to compete at the Gold Medal Final at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on 30 May. 

Our last soloist has made it through to the Gold Medal Final of the 2020 Annual Music Competition. In a hard-fought Section Final last night, five young musicians battled it out take home the £5,000 Keyboard Prize and a coveted spot in the final. 

Wednesday evening saw the unveiling of ROSL's latest exhibition, The Magic Lamp: Dreams of our Age by artist Rosemary Clunie and writer Ben Okri. 

ROSL's activities in both music and the visual arts stretch back decades, with the Annual Music Competition celebrating its 66th year in 2018, and our programme of rolling exhibitions beginning in the 1980s. With such a rich history, it was decided in 1985 to marry these two, often disparate, forms of artistic expression. 

To commemorate the passing of Professor Barrie Pettman, Vice President of ROSL and generous funder with his wife Maureen of the Pettman/ROSL Scholarship for a New Zealand Chamber Ensemble, the newly formed Pettman Ensemble will be performing an evening of chamber music at the London clubhouse on Wednesday 29 November. 

Many of you visiting the clubhouse will have noticed the wonderful artwork adorning our walls. Not just the exhibitions, centred on the Central Lounge, which change every three months, but all the other beautiful portraits and pieces scattered around the rooms, halls and staircases of the building. ROSL ARTS is currently undertaking an extensive cataloguing exercise to find out exactly what is up on our walls and what is currently tucked away in storage. Some of the artwork dates back to the very beginnings of the organisation and some is much more recent, so why undertake this massive task now? The reasons are threefold. 

Not just the star of the Keyboard Section Final, our beautiful Steinway Model D provides accompaniment during virtually all other rounds of the Annual Music Competition. Given its workload, it needs careful care to ensure it plays and sounds as good as it possibly can. 

ROSL ARTS and BEARSPACE are delighted to launch NO PLACE, an exhibition of emerging artists work examining the theme of finding home at Over-Seas House from Friday 15 September until January 2018. 

Thursday evening saw the penultimate event of the Annual Music Competition with our Overseas Final, which celebrates the musicians from our Section Finals who hail from overseas, and this year we had four incredible musicians from New Zealand and Australia. 

“Magic is something we have been delighted, entertained and terrified by for thousands of years: it demands our attention,” Maev Kennedy, special writer for The Guardian, challenges the audience of last night's Drawing Room Discussion to disagree. 

Luxuriate in an evening of 1920s style and sophistication with Alex Mendham and his Orchestra performing well-loved songs by Gershwin, Porter and Berlin for your enjoyment on Friday 29 November at Over-Seas House. 

Yesterday, ROSL ARTS launched a very exciting new venture as the Open Call for their 2018 Visual Art Scholarship with The Art House in Wakefield went live!