BETH MACKAY

Beth Mackay was awarded a Postgraduate Diploma (Vocal Studies) with distinction from the Royal Northern College of Music in December. She now studies with Irene Drummond in Edinburgh. During her time at the RNCM, Beth was a recipient of the Annie Ridyard Scholarship which fully assisted her final year of study and was a finalist in the Frederic Cox award for young singers. Prior to studying at the RNCM, Beth attained a BA (Hons) from the University of Leeds in 2004 where she read music and received first class marks for performance.

Beth has performed the alto solos in Bach’s Mass in B Minor, and been featured soloist in Handel’s oratorios Israel in Egypt and Esther, under the direction of Peter Holman with the Leeds Baroque Orchestra. She sang at the Suffolk Villages Festival last summer in Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater (with Philippa Hyde) and Handel’s Dixit Dominus and will return there to sing the Sorceress in Dido and Aeneas later this year. Beth has also sung alto roles in Missa Salibergensis (Biber), Come Ye Sons of Art (Purcell), Gloria (Vivaldi), Te Deum (Charpentier), Messiah (Handel), Mozart’s Vesperae Solennes de Confessore, Haydn’s Harmoniemesse, Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, Tippett's A Child of our Time, Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, Copland’s In The Beginning and Karl Jenkins’s The Armed Man. She has twice participated in Classic FM’s Mostly Mozart Festival finale with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields.

Beth’s opera roles include the Baker's Wife in Sondheim's Into the Woods, Rihova in Dvorak's The Stubborn Lovers, Morgan Le Fay in Avalon by Michael Babb, Lapak in Janacek’s The Cunning Little Vixen and Larina in Eugene Onegin. The RNCM’s excerpt series has seen her as Polinesso (Ariodante) and Nancy (Albert Herring) and the title roles in Handel’s Ariodante, Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia and Rossini’s L’Italiana in Algeri.