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The English soprano, Katharine Hawnt, discovered a passion for music at a very early age - singing in her pram and bashing out her own compositions on the piano. The voice of Julie Andrews (particularly in The Sound of Music) was an instant hit and eversince she has maintained an interest in 'voices that speak', moving on to the likes of Emma Kirkby and Evelyn Tubb in her teenage years. Having completed her first degree at King’s College London, where she was a choral scholar, she then took a place at the prestigious Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Switzerland, where she met her husband, Uri Smilansky. There she studied with some of Europe’s leading experts in the performance of medieval, Renaissance and Baroque music - in particular Evelyn Tubb, Anthony Rooley, Kathleen Dineen, Randall Cook and Dominique Vellard. She has also studied with Emma Kirkby and Andreas Scholl and the wonderful vocal technician Christopher Johnson. She obtained her PhD in Musicology from the University of Southampton (October 2013-December 2017).
Katharine Hawnt is a versatile singer with a reputation for a pure and honest tone and natural approach to singing. She has performed regularly throughout Europe, as a soloist and ensemble member with Collegium Vocale Gent (Director: Philippe Herreweghe) (Belgium), Musica Secreta (UK), Al Ayre Español (Spain), Trinity Baroque (Director: Julian Podger) (UK), Ensemble Plus Ultra (UK) and Nuove Musiche (The Netherlands), under directors such as Philippe Herreweghe, Peter Phillips, Sir Neville Marriner, Fabio Biondi and Anthony Rooley, and has appeared in a number of recordings, broadcasts and festivals in the UK and abroad. She is most regularly to be found performing at the Brighton Early Music Festival where she has featured in at least one concert per festival since its first year. Although 2011 saw a brief lull in performing due to the birth of her beautiful daughter.
In recent years, Katharine Hawnt has also enjoyed performing a number of operatic roles including Dido in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, Bastienne in W.A. Mozart’s Bastien und Bastienne and Margery in The Dragon of Wantley all for RossLive!, and La Musica and Euridice in L'Orfeo for Chilmark Opera. Some of her latest engagements have included performing Belinda in Dido and Aeneas in San Sebastián, Spain, and Venus and the Sorceress in a Baroque production by Mercurius Company at the Cadogan Hall, London. She has made regular appearances as Serafina in a music-drama based on the novel Sacred Hearts by Sarah Dunant and her singing was used by the BBC as the voice of ‘Serafina’ in the radio drama for Woman’s Hour, Radio 4.
4 years ago she released her first solo CD with the lute-song trio A Garden of Eloquence under the Etcetera label, Executive Producer - Sting.
Katharine Hawnt teaches singing at Sherborne School for Girls (September 2005-December 2016). Since August 2013 she lives in Sherborne. |
