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The English soprano, Emma Walshe, took part in numerous local musical productions as a very small child. She used to sing all the time and so her parents suggested when she was 8 that she might like to try singing lessons. Shortly afterwards she also started learning the flute and piano. She studied at St Annes Secondary School Tipperary (Class of 1999). She developed a passion for choral singing as a teenager, performing with the National Youth Choir of Great Britain and the Gloucester Cathedral Youth Choir. Her love of the early choral repertoire was cemented during her time as a choral scholar at Gonville and Caius College Cambridge, where she read Music. She later studied at the Trinity College Oxford.
After graduating in music from Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, Emma Walshe participated in 2008 in the Monteverdi Choir Apprenticeship Scheme under Sir John Eliot Gardiner. She subsequently worked closely with the group, performing solos in George Frideric Handel’s Israel in Egypt in Lucerne, Rheingau and the Edinburgh Festival, J.S. Bach cantatas at Cadogan Hall and a tour of G.F. Handel's Dixit Dominus including a performance at Buckingham Palace and a televised broadcast from the Chapelle Royalle Versailles.
A Baroque and Renaissance specialist, Emma Walshe is fast becoming one of the UK's most sought-after early music sopranos and she has enchanted audiences and critics alike with her pure voice. In 2008, she began an apprenticeship with the Monteverdi Choir. Since then, she has collaborated both as a soloist and consort singer with world-renowned early music ensembles and conductors, including the Monteverdi Choir & English Baroque Soloists (Director: John Eliot Gardiner), Gabrieli Consort & Players (Director: Paul McCreesh), Platinum Consort (Director: Scott Inglis-Kidge), The Marian Consort (Director: Rory McCleery), Arcangelo (Director: Jonathan Cohen), Polyphony (Director: Stephen Layton), Tenebrae (Director: Nigel Short), Orlando Chamber Choir (Director: William Dawes), The Sixteen (Director: Harry Christophers), The Cardinall’s Musick, Collegium Vocale Gent (Director: Philippe Herreweghe), Ora Singers, and Early Opera Company (Director: Christian Curnyn); she has also sung with Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (Laurence Cummings, Steven Devine, Masaaki Suzuki). Her thriving career has seen her perform in some of the world’s most prestigious venues including the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Wiener Konzerthaus, Felsereitschule Salzburg, Kölner Philharmonie, Cité de la Musique Paris and the Royal Festival Hall.
As a huge fan of The Tallis Scholars (Director: Peter Phillips), having listened many times to their original recording of Tallis' Spem in Alium, Emma Walshe was honoured and excited to be asked to perform with them for the first time in May 2010. It was a baptism of fire as the concert was filmed for a broadcast on French television! Since then she has had the pleasure of performing with the group all over the world, including in Japan, China, Europe and the USA, becoming a regular member in early 2014. Highlights have included their two collaborations with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, performances in stunning venues such as the impressive cathedral in Siena and singing stratospherically high pieces such as Taverner’s Missa Gloria Tibi Trinitas with her fellow soprano colleague Amy Haworth. She has particularly enjoyed exploring the choral repertoire of Arvo Pärt, most especially his Sieben Magnificat-Antiphonen, which she performed back in her very first concert. Although Mouton’s Nesciens Mater and Byrd’s Tribue Domine have to be her absolute favourites!
Emma Walshe's operatic work has included Belinda in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas with Devon Baroque, Gluck’s Orphée at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Weber’s Le Freyschutz at the Opera Comique Paris and Georges Bizet's Carmen at the Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg.
In June 2013, Emma Walshe sang the role of Daniel in G.F. Handel's Susanna with the Early Opera Company at the Spitalfields Music Summer Festival. Recent performances include J.S. Bach’s St John Passion (BWV 245) at the Festival Bach de Lausanne and Cadogan Hall; J.S. Bach cantatas at King’s Place; Purcell odes from the Potsdam Music Festival; J.S. Bach’s Mass in B Minor (BWV 232) at the British Museum; Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem at Snape Maltings; Monteverdi’s Vespers in Gloucester Cathedral.
Emma Walshe's numerous recordings include the award-nominated Arcangelo disc ‘John Blow: An Ode on the death of Mr Henry Purcell’ and the award-winning Gabrieli disc ‘A Rose Magnificat’.
Emma Walshe is married to Hugh Walshe and has one son, Finn (b 2016). |
