Kate Symonds-Joy
Artist Reviews
I've seen some gripping performances of Carmen, but not one like this. Some terrific professional singers - notably Kate Symonds-Joy - taunting and tempestuous in the title role.
The sheer expressivity was profound. In the most intimate moment in the whole Mass, the Agnus Dei, one felt mezzo-soprano Kate Symonds-Joy communicating the deep pathos of the words with complete emotional nakedness.
Biography
Kate Symonds-Joy graduated with a First Class music degree from Cambridge University and a DipRAM from the Royal Academy Opera Course.
Concert highlights include Bach’s Christmas Oratorio in Sydney Opera House, Elgar’s Sea Pictures with Christopher Robinson and the RPO, Rutter’s Feel the Spirit at the Barbican, Mahler’s Symphony no.2 at Cadogan Hall, Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius, Handel’s Messiah with Bordeaux Opera and at Birmingham Symphony Hall, Mozart’s Requiem with Sir John Eliot Gardiner, and Verdi’s Requiem at the Royal Albert Hall.
Kate has sung Berio’s Sequenza III and Berberian Stripsody for nonclassical, Berio Folksongs with the Psappha Ensemble and cycled to the most northerly inhabited part of the UK to sing Judith Weir’s King Harald’s Saga in the Shetland Islands’ Muckleflugga lighthouse. Kate also joined The Prison Choir Project to sing the role of Carmen with a chorus of inmates in Dartmoor and Wandsworth Prisons.
Kate sings regularly as a core member of Solomon’s Knot Baroque Collective, who are a Wigmore Hall Artist in Residence and have appeared at the Aldeburgh Festival, Leipzig Bachfest, and BBC Proms. She teaches the choral scholars of both Gonville and Caius College, Schola Cantorum and Clare College, Cambridge.
May 2025
For Oratorio and Concert repertoire please scroll down:
| Oratorio and concert rep | |
| Composer | Work |
| Bach J.S. | B Minor Mass |
| Cantatas (various) | |
| Christmas Oratorio (all parts) | |
| Magnificat | |
| St John Passion | |
| St Matthew Passion | |
| Berlioz | Les Nuits D’ete |
| Bliss | Pastorale |
| Beethoven | Mass in C |
| Missa Solemnis | |
| Symphony No 9 | |
| Bernstein | Jeremiah Symphony |
| Brahms | Alto Rhapsody |
| Britten | Ceremony of Carols |
| Rejoice in the Lamb | |
| Bruckner | Te Deum |
| Copland | Old American Songs with orchestra |
| Durufle | Requiem |
| Dvorak | Stabat Mater |
| Elgar | Dream of Gerontius |
| Sea Pictures | |
| The Music Makers | |
| Handel | Dixit Dominus |
| Esther | |
| Israel in Egypt | |
| Jeptha | |
| Messiah | |
| Semele | |
| Haydn | Masses |
| Stabat Mater | |
| Jenkins | Stabat Mater |
| Lambert | The Rio Grande |
| Mahler | Symphony no. 2 |
| Mendelssohn | Elijah |
| Mozart | Requiem |
| Vespers | |
| Rachmaninov | Vespers |
| Rossini | Petite Messe Solenelle |
| Stabat Mater | |
| Rutter | Feel the Spirit |
| Schubert | Masses |
| Schumann | Requiem |
| Tippett | A Child of Our Time |
| Verdi | Requiem |
| Vivaldi | Gloria |
| Stabat Mater | |