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, Ravel’s Chansons Madecasses at the Purcell Room, Rutter’s Feel the Spirit at the Barbican, Bach’s St John Passion in the Aldeburgh Festival, Mahler’s Symphony no.2 at Cadogan Hall, Handel’s Messiah at Birmingham Symphony Hall, Mozart’s Requiem with Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Elgar’s Sea Pictures with Cheltenham Symphony Orchestra, and Verdi’s Requiem at the Royal Albert Hall.
Kate recently 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 and joined The Prison Choir Project to sing Carmen with a chorus of inmates in Dartmoor Prison, in the presence of HRH The Prince of Wales.
Kate teaches the choral scholars of both Gonville and Caius College and St John’s Voices, Cambridge. She lives in nearby Royston in a 17th century barn with husband and baby son Wilfred. Future projects include Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius, 1st Witch, Dido and Aeneas with the Academy of Ancient Music at the Barbican, a return to Carmen this time in Wandsworth Prison, and Bach’s St John Passion with Solomon’s Knot in Wigmore Hall.