Where are you from? 

I grew up near St Andrews in Scotland but went to music school in England in my teens. My family are English, so one way or another I never wound up getting the accent! I moved to London in September 2022 and I’m loving it so far. 

What are your interests and passions? 

Music is my big passion – my main instrument growing up was the piano, but at university I was introduced to choral singing and completely caught the bug. Nowadays I hardly play the piano and spend most of my time outside of HarrisonParrott working as a freelance singer. I especially love singing contemporary choral music, so it’s brilliant to be able to work with new music at Birdsong. Aside from music, I’ve always loved words – I’m a total bookworm, and I also write occasionally for the London Review of Books blog. 

What did you study? 

I did an academic music degree at university rather than going to music college, as I wasn’t sure I wanted to pursue a performing career on the piano. I really enjoyed being able to combine the historical and music theory elements of my course with more practical music-making. 

How did you find out about the HarrisonParrott Internship with Creative Access? 

My careers advisor at university told me about Creative Access, and I’ve checked the opportunities on the website periodically since then. When this internship came up, I thought it looked perfect.

Fun fact about you? 

I did a bit of composing in my teens and was a composer with National Youth Orchestra, but it fizzled out when I started my degree and got busy with other things. Now that my work involves lots of new music, though, I can feel the itch to create starting to return… 

Your future aspirations? 

I hope to develop technically as a singer over the next few years and expand my comfort zone in terms of repertoire. Ideally, singing will continue to form a central part of my life alongside a more behind-the-scenes role in the classical music industry. 

Outside of work, I’m slowly getting into cooking after being atrocious at it for many years. I also want to learn to do cryptic crosswords, but there are only so many hours in the day!