Biography

 


“With her absolute precision of pitch and huge range, Poppy Holden is a truly outstanding artist”  – Glasgow Herald.


  1. Poppy Holden studied at the Elder Conservatorium of Music, Adelaide, and at the Royal College of Music, London; with Nadia Boulanger, Paris; as a Fromm Fellow at Tanglewood Music Center, USA; and as a postgraduate at York and Newcastle universities, having graduated from the OU. She has performed and recorded contemporary and early music with the Fires of London, Trevor Wishart, Wilfrid Mellers, the Consort of Musicke, Gothic Voices, the Tallis Scholars, Musica Reservata, the Taverner Consort and the English Concert. She premièred Oliver Knussen's Second Symphony at the Windsor Festival and at Tanglewood; Knussen’s Pooh Songs at the South Bank; and Bruno Maderna's Satyricon with the Nederlands Opera. Head of Vocal Studies at Newcastle University from 2007-2013 and voice coach at Durham University since 2015, she also coaches members of the Royal Northern Sinfonia Chorus. Since 1991 she has been a professor at the Czech Music Society’s early-music summer school in Valtice. She has written for early-music magazines and presented ‘Mainly for Pleasure’ for BBC Radio 3, and she researches, composes and performs music connected to the Scottish Borders, and the Northeast where she lives.


  3. Since 1973 Poppy has taught in universities and in her own studio, helping singers at all stages of ability to achieve a healthy, comfortable vocal technique with which to tell their stories in song; some have gone on to professional singing careers, others thrive in local choirs and ensembles. To stay fresh as a teacher, Poppy continues to learn languages, and has trained in the Estill Method at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Her lectures on border ballads are proving popular and her first book on the subject, “Border Ballads from Ettrick & Yarrow” (ISBN 978-1-9998753-0-5), was released by Belle Grove Press in Autumn 2017, and “Thomas the Rhymer” came out in 2018. A new book, “Unquiet Graves”, is in preparation.


  5. In April 2019 the composer Andy Ford interviewed Poppy for “The Music Show” on ABC Radio, Sydney, Australia.


  1. Portrait by Felicity Laurence