66th Annual Kathleen Ferrier Awards Competition begins this month

This year’s Kathleen Ferrier Awards Competition will be hosted by BBC Radio 3 Presenter, Martin Handley at Southwark’s Grade II listed Henry Wood Hall. The competition will take place Friday 12 November and Sunday 14 November, with winners announced at the end of Sunday’s final.

Ferrier chairman Valerie Beale is pleased with the turnout at this year’s competition: ‘It is wonderful that so many young singers were undeterred by the difficulties the pandemic made for them; over a hundred of them applied and were heard in the preliminaries. The semi-finals should be a feast of good singing.’

The competition will be recorded and broadcast on the Kathleen Ferrier Awards website on 29 November, 30 November, 1 December and 2 December at 7.30pm. The final will be available to watch on Saturday 4 and Sunday 5 December at 7.30pm and the streams will be available online for a month after their broadcast date.

Sir Thomas Allen will chair the jury for this year’s awards, joined by mezzo Alice Coote, soprano Valerie Masterson, tenor Ian Partridge, and James Baillieu, leading song and chamber music accompanist.

The winner of the Kathleen Ferrier Awards will receive a cash prize of £12,500 with the competition’s second prize set at £6,000. The best performer of an individual song in any language in either the semi-final or the final will receive the Ferrier Loveday Song Prize of £5,000 and the Accompanist’s Prize of £5,000, funded by Help Musicians, is available to any pianist whose singer makes it through to the semi-final.

The performers who are through to the semi-final are:

• Jack Lee, baritone, accompanied by Chad Vindin
• Sophie Sparrow, soprano, accompanied by Harry Rylance
• Hugh Cutting, counter-tenor, accompanied by George Ireland (competing for the Help Musician’s Accompanist’s Prize)
• Helen Charlston, mezzo, accompanied by Natalie Burch (competing for the Help Musician’s Accompanist’s Prize)
• James Atkinson, baritone, accompanied by Ana Manastireanu (competing for the Help Musician’s Accompanist’s Prize)
• Magnus Walker, tenor, accompanied by Enuji Han
• Laura Peresivana, soprano, accompanied by Joseph Beesley (competing for the Help Musician’s Accompanist’s Prize)
• Edward Jowle, bass baritone, accompanied by Lucy Colquhoun
• Cassandra Wright, soprano, accompanied by Ilan Kurtser (competing for the Help Musician’s Accompanist’s Prize)
• Michael Lafferty, baritone, accompanied by Ashley Beauchamp (competing for the Help Musician’s Accompanist’s Prize)

You can find out more about this year’s Kathleen Ferrier Awards at their website.