|
The Welsh soprano and conductor, Katie Thomas, hails from the prestigious stable of Welsh performers fortunate to have been nurtured by John Hugh Thomas OBE, who mentored her both as a singer and Assistant Conductor with his renowned Swansea Bach Choir for nine years. She studied voice at Cardiff University and graduated with the Sir Geraint Evans Prize for the best finals vocal recital. At the Royal Academy of Music, she continued to learn singing as a Second Study with Julie Kennard.
As a consort singer, Katie Thomas appears regularly with The Monteverdi Choir for Sir John Eliot Gardiner, with Polyphony under Stephen Layton and with the Academy of Ancient Music for Richard Egarr. Recent performances have taken place at such prestigious venues as Carnegie Hall, New York, the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam and the Musikverein in Vienna, as well as the Wigmore Hall, Royal Festival Hall, Barbican, Cadogan Hall and St John's Smith Square in London.
Katie Thomas’ solo highlights have included performing in the London Festival of Contemporary Church Music for BBC Radio 3, the Schleswig-Holstein Festival in Lübeck for Sir John Eliot Gardiner with the English Baroque Soloists, and singing the title role in George Frideric Handel’s “Esther” in the London Handel Festival. She featured as a soloist again for John Eliot Gardiner in February 2012, this time with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra in Ferrara, the Canary Islands, Barcelona and Madrid, and in 2013 with the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig.
Her solo concert repertoire includes: J.S. Bach: St John Passion (BWV 245), B Minor Mass (BWV 232), Cantatas BWV 4, BWV 10, BWV 29, BWV 51 (Jauchzet Gott) BWV 59, BWV 130, BWV 132; Blow: Venus and Adonis; Johannes Brahms: Requiem; Benjamin Britten: Ceremony of Carols, Wedding Anthem ‘Amo Ergo Sum’; François Couperin: Leçons de Ténèbres; Fanshawe: African Sanctus; Gabriel Fauré: Requiem; G.F. Handel: Messiah, Esther, Israel In Egypt, Dixit Dominus; Haydn: Creation, Little Organ Mass; Monteverdi: Vespers 1610; W.A. Mozart: Requiem, Coronation Mass, Vespers, Exsultate Jubilate; Purcell: King Arthur, Come Ye Sons of Art, O dive custos; Antonio Vivaldi: Gloria.
Operatic work includes chorus appearances in Der Freischütz at the Opéra Comique in Paris, and Carmen at the Grand Theâtre in Luxembourg with the Monteverdi Choir.
Katie Thomas also performs in a duo with lutenist, Yair Avidor, covering repertoire from Dowland to Strozzi. |
