Julie Kennard
Soprano

Julie Kennard Soprano

Julie Kennard read music at the University of Southampton and then went on to the Royal College of Music to study singing with Ruth Packer.

Julie has always specialised in oratorio although early on in her career she took lead roles in several operas. She has appeared in all major UK concert halls and cathedrals and in many venues abroad. In Ireland, she was a soloist in Mahler’s Eighth Symphony for RTE Television and Bach’s Mass in B Minor; in Italy, Poland Switzerland and France she performed the role of Dido in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas; in Iceland she featured as soprano soloist in John Speight’s Symphony No. 2 for the Symposium of Nordic composers- a work she has subsequently recorded. Verdi’s Requiem has also played a large part in Julie’s career and to date she has sung 80 performances of that great work.  English music has featured strongly in her repertoire -giving numerous performances of Vaughan Williams’ Sea Symphony, Elgar’s The Kingdom and The Apostles, Herbert Howells’ Hymnus Paradisi and Britten’s War Requiem. The War Requiem was highlighted in a television documentary of Britten and showed Julie singing in a commemorative performance from Coventry Cathedral with CUMS and Stephen Cleobury.

As well as more conventional repertoire, other concerts have included Sullivan’s Te Deum, Rutter’s Mass for the Children, Elgar’s Spirit of England, Karl Jenkins’ The Armed Man and a concert to celebrate William Wilberforce. There have been recitals in the Brancaster, Chipping Camden and Chelmsford Festivals featuring a programme that she shares with her husband Michael George. Solo recitals in Luxemburg and at the Three Choirs Festival have featured Schumann’s Frauenliebe und Leben, Les Nuits d’été by Berlioz and On this Island by Britten, Strauss’s  Four Last Songs and a recital for soprano and organ featuring a new commission by Pavel Novak, The lake of heavenly Desires. She was the soprano soloist in a programme of words and music celebrating the life of Admiral Lord Nelson with Richard Baker as the narrator and also in a programme featuring Dame Judi Dench and her family.

Most recently, Brahms’ German Requiem has featured numerous times in Julie’s performances - one of which was in Istanbul with the Choir of Kings College Cambridge. She has also sung Mozart’s Vespers, Beethoven‘s Ninth Symphony and Mendelssohn’s Hear my prayer and very recently concerts have included several performances of the Sea Symphony,  the Brahms German Requiem and Poulenc’s Gloria in the St Alban’s Organ Festival and Rossini’s Petite Messe Solenelle at Cadogan Hall.

Julie’s recordings show her versatility - Monteverdi’s Christmas Vespers, Haydn’s Nelson Mass with the Choir of St. Paul’s Cathedral, Howells’ Hymnus Paradisi with Vernon Handley and the RLPO, and a CD of Victorian and Edwardian Carols entitled “All Hayle to the Days”.