Credit: Debbie Scanlan, Wolf James Photography
“..one voice was truly exceptional: the mezzo-soprano Esther Brazil. Expect to hear more of her soon.”
Stephen Pritchard, The Observer, April 2013
Born in the United States and educated in Beijing, Singapore, and Sydney, Esther was a choral scholar at The Queen’s College, Oxford, where she read Philosophy and Theology. She recently gained an MA with Distinction from the Royal Academy of Music, where she was awarded full scholarships in both years, generously provided by the Kohn Foundation and Lucille Graham Trust.
Concert highlights include appearances as a soloist with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, London Handel Orchestra, English Baroque Soloists, and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique under Sir John Eliot Gardiner. Operatic roles have included Rosina (Barber of Seville), Sorceress (Dido and Aeneas), Euridice (L’Orfeo), Mrs Slender (Salieri’s Falstaff), Lauretta (Gianni Schicchi), Juno (The Judgment of Paris), Grand Duchess of Monteblanco (A Dinner Engagement), Iris/Hummingbird (The Birds), and Ninfa/Proserpina (L’Orfeo); and in RAM Vocal Faculty opera scenes, Erika (Vanessa), Sesto (Clemenza di Tito), Octavian (Der Rosenkavalier), and Minkswoman (Flight).
Recent appearances have included Handel’s Dixit Dominus with the Brook Street Band, Ninfa/Proserpina in Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo at King’s Place, solos in Schumann’s Manfred with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Brighton Early Music Festival’s Live! scheme and a Christmas programme at St John’s Smith Square with Oxford Baroque, as well as solo appearances in Vivaldi’s Gloria and Handel’s Dixit Dominus with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. She has most recently appeared as a soloist at the Royal Albert Hall with the English Baroque Soloists and Sir John Eliot Gardiner in the critically-acclaimed Bach Marathon.
Recordings have included Handel Dixit Dominus and Scarlatti Dixit Dominus with the Brook Street Band, Handel and Vivaldi Dixit Dominus settings with La Nuova Musica/David Bates, Charpentier’s Reniement de Saint Pierre for Harmonia Mundi USA/La Nuova Musica, and Bach’s Ascension Cantatas with the Monteverdi Choir. She is also a founding member of Oxford Baroque, who were selected as Young Artists in the 2012 Brighton Music Festival, and opened the 2013 Christmas Festival at St John's, Smith Square. She studies with Susan Roberts.
“Whereas the chorus represented the massed congregation of the Christian faithful, the soloists appeared as the individual believer, which was the contrast effected particularly by the delectably innocent tones of Hannah Morrison and Esther Brazil in the “Christe eleison”.”
“The choir were on very good form, with fine solo performances from singers drawn from the choir, notably from Esther Brazil.”
“Throughout the concert, Lewis used singers from the ensemble as soloists — most of them drawn from his pure-voiced and confident pool of sopranos. All of them revealed accomplished voices, not least Esther Brazil, whose soaring, radiant sound crowned a serene, Welsh-language reinvention of “Silent Night” (scored entirely for sopranos and mezzos) by Geraint Lewis.”