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The English mezzo-soprano ainger and violinist, Elizabeth Nurse, completed her MSt in Musicology at Oxford in 2019 and is now a Lay Clerk with the Christ Church Cathedral Choir (the first woman to be appointed). She studies singing with Miriam Allan. She won the Roy Harvey Memorial Cup for Opera and Oratorio at the Oxford Music Festival 2020, where she was awarded the highest marks in the singing classes.
Elizabeth Nurse is a versatile classical singer and violinist based near Oxford. She enjoys a variety of musical ventures and performs music from the 14th to the 21st centuries. She is a talented singer, and enjoys choral and consort singing as well as singing as a soloist, whether in opera, oratorio or recital work. She sings regularly with Untune the Sky, an Oxford-based mixed-instrumental ensemble specialising in soloistic ensemble performance. She performed Antonio Vivaldi's Stabat Mater as part of the Oxford Lent Concerts in 2017, and sang solos in the Wycombe Student Music performance of Felix Mendelssohn's Elijah in August 2016. Her operatic debut was as Female Chorus (narrator) in the St Peter's Opera Company performance of Benjamin Britten's The Rape of Lucretia. Other operatic credits include Galatea in George Frideric Handel's Acis and Galatea, and The Mayor’s Wife in Janáček’s Jenufa. Recently she has performed Gustav Mahler's Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen with Oxford Alternative Orchestra, and Clara Schumann’s Sechs Lieder (1844) with pianist Judith-Valerie Engel. She was a Voces8 Scholar 2021-2022; and surrently she is a member of The Marian Consort (Director: Rory McCleery)..
As a violinist, Elizabeth Nurse is experienced as a soloist, concert-master, and chamber musician. She won the Oxford University Philharmonia Concerto Competition and performed the Dvorak Violin Concerto in the Sheldonian in February 2019. She appears on the Queen’s Choir disc ‘House of the Mind’ as the violinist in Nico Muhly’s ‘Like as the Hart’. Recent performances have included playing Piazzolla's Four Seasons with Oxford Alternative Orchestra in the Holywell Music Room, performing the Camille Saint-Saëns' Fantasie for Violin and Harp with Anneke Hodnett, performed J.S. Bach's Concerto for violin, strings & continuo No. 2 in E major BWV 1042 with the Ripieno Players (formerly of Oxford). She performed the solo violin part in W.A. Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante in E flat Major K. 364 with the London Mozart Players in 2014, and in the same year won the Orchestral Instrument Award at the Oxford Music Festival. She played 2nd violin with the National Youth Orchestra (2013-2014). She led the orchestra for the New Chamber Opera production of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress. She has participated in master-classes for Pinchas Zukerman, Natalie Clein and Maxim Vengerov. She regularly gives recitals in Oxford.
Elizabeth Nurse also teaches teaching for the Buckinghamshire Music Trust, works as a Creative Leader with the Music Mind Spirit Trust, and is Education Officer for Instruments of Time and Truth. |
