2020 Kathleen Ferrier Award winners announced

Ferrier Award winners 2020 - Jessica Cale (first prize), Ella Taylor (second prize)

The winners of this year's Kathleen Ferrier Awards were announced after a competition which saw the semi-finals and final all streamed live on the competition website. This year's winner was soprano Jessica Cale, who studied at the Royal College of Music and was a finalist in the 2020 London Handel Singing Competition. The second prize was won by Ella Taylor, the trans non-binary soprano whose performances we caught a number of times when they were a young artist at the National Opera Studio. They have a passion for contemporary music and works by women and gender non-conforming artists.

The Ferrier Loveday song prize went to soprano Milly Forrest, who studied at the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal College of Music and who will make her Wigmore Hall debut next year, and whom we caught British Youth Opera's 2018 production of The Enchanted Island [see Anthony's review]. The accompanists prize went to Hamish Brown, who won the Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme Prize Winner in the 2019 Wigmore International Song Competition and is a former Oxford Lieder Young Artist.

The awards were judged by mezzo-soprano Rosalind Plowright, tenor Ryland Davies, pianist and accompanist Christopher Glynn and jury chair Valerie Beale who has chaired the Ferrier since 2013. The awards are still available to view on the competition website.