Ella Taylor

Soprano

Winner of Second Prize at the 2020 Kathleen Ferrier Awards, Ella Taylor is a soprano with a passion for performing contemporary music and works by women and gender non-conforming artists. They graduated from the Royal Academy of Music, where they gained Distinction in MA Performance, a DipRAM for an outstanding final recital and the Charles Norman Prize and during 2019 / 2020 were a Young Artist at London’s National Opera Studio, their studies generously supported by Cooper Sinclair, the Sybil Tutton Award from Help Musicians UK and the Opera Awards Foundation. They currently study with Elizabeth Ritchie. Accolades include the Lesley Garrett Opera Prize (David Clover Singers Platform), finalist in the Peter Hulsen Orchestral Song Award with the Southbank Sinfonia and being awarded BBC Chorister of the Year. In 2024, they were conferred with Associateship of the Royal Academy of Music.

Their operatic engagements have included Paris Paride ed Elena for Bampton Classical Opera, The Cock The Cunning Little Vixen on tour with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra conducted by Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla (Birmingham, Dortmund, Hamburg, Paris), Fiordiligi Così fan tutte for Wild Arts Opera and Gerda in Errollyn Wallen’s The Paradis Files for Graeae.

Notable concert highlights have included Momentum: Our Future, Now Recitals with Roderick Williams for the 2021 Brighton Festival and at Vinehall School, Pierrot Lunaire with The Façade Ensemble and Alicia Jane Turner’s Tell me when you get home with the London Sinfonietta.

Their broadcasts include Oliver Knussen’s Trumpets from the British Composer Awards, The Paradis Files, Don Carlo, In Tune, Music Matters and This Classical Life for BBC Radio 3, whilst their recordings include Burst forth my tears / Flow my tears (featuring music by John Dowland arranged for synthesisers), available on Classical Remix, Sparrow in Rylan Gleave’s Powder Down for Shadwell Opera’s Digital Commission Series, Josquin des Prez: Mille Regretz for English Touring Opera’s Spring 2021 Digital Season and Caroline Shaw’s Is a Rose with Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Oliver Zeffman, available on Platoon.

Ella Taylor is a keen collaborator and recitalist, making a dedicated effort to work with and perform works by people underrepresented in classical music. Recent collaborations include the project After Violence with _REMIX; an exploration of violence and masculinity through a queer lens with drag artist Rhys’s Pieces, as well as working with composers and librettists in the creation of new, LGBT+ work. They have been invited to give talks about navigating a career as a trans opera singer, and more broadly about gender in opera by places such as the Royal Opera House and the academic conference Place and Space for TECHNE. They also have performed at Leeds Lieder as part of the Composer and Poets Forum, with Ensemble 360 at Music in the Round and as an Emerging Artist for Oxford International Song Festival.

Recent engagements have included Meritaten Akhnaten for English National Opera, Belinda / Second Witch Dido and Aeneas at the Ustinov Studio Theatre of the Royal Theatre, Bath, Anne Trulove The Rake’s Progress (Cover) for Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Tebaldo Don Carlo for The Royal Opera, London, Górecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs with the Philharmonia Orchestra at the Bold Tendencies Festival, Mahler Symphony No. 2 with Sheffield Philharmonic Orchestra, Messiah with both Huddersfield Choral Society and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at London’s Royal Albert Hall, Vaughan Williams Dona nobis pacem with Britten Sinfonia at the Brighton Festival, Rain in City and Country for London Song Festival and Classical Pride at the Barbican with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.

Engagements in 2024 / 2025 include The Activist in the première of Ellen Reid’s The Shell Trial for Dutch National Opera a return to The Royal Opera, London, as Fourth Maid Elektra, Pilate’s Wife in Coleridge-Taylor’s The Atonement at Three Choirs Festival, Mahler Symphony No. 2 with the Philharmonia Orchestra at the Bold Tendencies Festival, Mahler Symphony No. 4 with Sheffield Philharmonic Orchestra, Elijah at West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge, Classic FM Hall of Fame with City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Joe Hisaishi: Symphonic Concert: Music from the Studio Ghibli Films of Hayao Miyazaki at OVO Arena Wembley, Joe Hisaishi in Concert with Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at La Défense, Paris, Joe Hisaishi The End of the World with Future Orchestra Classics at Suntory Hall, Tokyo, and An Evening of Don Juan for SongEasel.