Recital – Katie Bray – CANCELLED

Arne – Water parted from the sea

Haydn – Piercing eyes

Haydn – Mermaid’s song

Haydn – She never told her love

Vivaldi – Ho il cor gia lacerò (from Griselda)

Bach – Prelude and Fugue in D minor BWV 875

Handel – Verdi prati (from Alcina)

Handel – Sta nell’ircana (from Alcina)

INTERVAL

Mozart – Laudamus te (from Mass in C minor K 427)

Bach – Vergnügte Ruh

Bach – Prelude and Fugue in D Major BWV 874

Handel – Where shall I fly? (from Hercules)

Bach – Laudamus te (from Mass in B minor BWV 232)

Conti – Non è ver (from L’Issipile)

Purcell – Dido’s Lament (from Dido and Aeneas)

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Performers

Soprano: Katie Bray

Piano: William Vann

Biography

Consistently earning praise for her outstanding stage presence and vocal performances, British mezzo-soprano Katie Bray has fast established herself as an artist to watch.

Recent roles for Opera North include Hansel (Hansel and Gretel), Rosina (Il Barbiere di Siviglia), Varvara (Katya Kabanova), Louis XV Chair/Female Cat/Owl (L’enfant et les sortilèges), Lola (Cavalleria Rusticana), Nancy (Albert Herring), and she has also sung for English National Opera (Daughter, Akhnaten and The Way Back Home), Scottish Opera (Lucilla, La Scala di seta), Welsh National Opera (Zerlina, Don Giovanni), Garsington Opera (Zulma, L’Italiana in Algeri and Zaida, Il turco in Italia), Opera Holland Park (Mallika, Lakmé), English Touring Opera (Zenobia, Radamisto, Minerva, Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria and Satirino, La Calisto) and at the Grimeborn Festival (Charlotte, Werther). She also recently performed in a staged cabaret of ‘songs banned by the Nazis’, Effigies of Wickedness, at the Gate Theatre, Notting Hill, in collaboration with English National Opera.

Equally at home on the concert platform, Katie Bray has performed in prestigious venues such as the Wigmore Hall, Cadogan Hall, and the Holywell Music Room and she appears regularly in the London English Song Festival, where she directed concerts at Wilton’s Music Hall, as well as at the Oxford Lieder Festival for which she recorded a disc of Schumann songs with Sholto Kynoch. Other recent highlights include a semi-staged version of Wolf’s Italienisches Liederbuch with Christopher Glynn and Roderick Williams at Milton Court Concert Hall and Ryedale Festival, and the premiere of new monodrama Frida with the East London Music Group.

Katie Bray is particularly noted for baroque repertoire and has appeared with Barokksolistene and Bjarte Eike, Monteverdi Choir and Sir John Eliot Gardiner, La Nuova Musica, Ludus Baroque, London Handel Orchestra and Laurence Cummings, Wroclaw Baroque Orchestra, and Spira Mirabilis. She has also appeared with orchestras including the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestre Chambre de Paris, and the Aalborg Symphony Orchestra.Highlights of the 2019/20 season include the title role in Vivaldi’s Griselda for Irish National Opera with Peter Whelan, Dorabella Cosi fan tutte for Welsh National Opera, Eurinome in Conti’s Issipile with La Nuova Musica and David Bates, as well as Handel’s Messiah with Christoph Altstaedt and the RPO at the Royal Albert Hall, and a tour of Bach’s St John Passion with Harry Bicket and The English Concert.

Katie Bray graduated as a Karaviotis Scholar from the opera course at the Royal Academy of Music, and was awarded the Principal’s Prize and won First Prize in the Richard Lewis Singing Competition. She represented England in the 2019 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition and was awarded the Dame Joan Sutherland Audience Prize.