Mhairi Lawson

While still a student at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Mhairi appeared on a BBC Radio 3 broadcast of Schubert, Haydn and Mozart Lieder with the fortepianist Olga Tverskaya which led to her first CD recording of Haydn’s English and Scottish Songs (premiere recording on original instruments).

As a soloist Mhairi has sung in theatres and concert halls worldwide with such companies as English National Opera, Les Arts Florissants, The Gabrieli Consort, The Academy of Ancient Music and The Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and with conductors including William Christie, Sir Charles Mackerras, Paul McCreesh and Sir John Eliot Gardiner. She enjoys working in repertoire ranging from traditional folksong to Gilbert and Sullivan Opera and contemporary commissions, and has made many commercial recordings, recently Haydn’s ‘Creation’ with the Choir of New College, Oxford and ‘Venice by Night’ with the Gramophone Award winning virtuoso baroque band la Serenissima.

Also with La Serenissima, Mhairi has performed large-scale pieces including La Senna Festeggiante, La fida ninfa and Catone in Utica in Venice. With Christian Curnyn’s The Early Opera Company, she sings arias written for Faustina Bordoni Hasse in the programme entitled Handel’s Rival Queens and has sung the roles of ‘Morgana’ and ‘Ginevra’ in their productions of Handel’s Alcina and Ariodante.

On the operatic stage in the USA, Mhairi sang in Purcell’s King Arthur with the Mark Morris Dance Group’s production at New York City Opera, in which she appeared also at English National Opera and with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra in Berkeley, California.

Highlights of last season were performances of Brahms’ Requiem in Dublin, staged performances of Vivaldi’s l’Olimpiade in Israel, Buxton Opera Festival and the Lufthansa Festival in London, the completion of two discs of Schubert’s Lieder and the New Years’s Eve Concert of Venice by night at London’s Wigmore Hall.