Linda Hirst
Linda’s career has spanned 50 years so far. She now lives in Whitstable and swims - not every day. She grew up listening to Frank Sinatra, Joan Sutherland and Doris Day and had wonderful music teachers both in primary and secondary schools. There were 4 youth orchestras in Huddersfield and she played the flute in 3 of them. She knew at 8 that singing was what she felt best doing, so there was never a choice. Plants, gardens and flowers have been a big interest since she was small, when she was allowed to pick pansies in a friend’s garden. Hoya bellas are the best, with gardenias a close second. She always got excited when a new piece of music arrived and she could start work - when it arrived by bike courier the impetus was fastest. The first piece written for her was by John Gardner while she was still at school, and this somehow opened the door to new music and working with composers who knew her, and the way she might sing their music. The great thing about learning new music, or indeed any music, is trying to get near to what the composer might have been thinking.
Having studied at the GSMD she sang in the 70s early music revival for John Eliot Gardiner, Roger Norrington, David Munrow; often emerging a a soloist in Purcell, Bach and Handel, as well as recording Tommy with The Who and Atom Heart Mother with Pink Floyd. She was a Swingle Singer from 74 - 78, then co-founded the quartet Electric Phoenix which commissioned every piece it sang. With both groups she travelled the world, developing a fast-rising solo career singing contemporary repertoire with living composers. She worked with Ligeti, Berio and Henze, as well as English composers Knussen, Osborne, Weir, Holt and too many to list in the rest of the world. She collaborated with London Sinfonietta, Lontano and Psappha in the UK, Ensembles Intercontemporain, Modern and recherché in Europe, sang in festivals, Proms, and for TV and radio with conductors Rattle, Nagano, Howarth, Knussen, Gielen and many more. She was well received, critics writing not only about “the performance of a lifetime”(Revelation and Fall by Maxwell Davies), but also about what she wore - “a dress of molten metal" to perform Berio’s Circles. Some recent highlights have been: improvising in the Venice Biennale, being a live part of Martin Creed’s Toast exhibition at Hauser and Wirth and a gig with him in the Barbican (2019), Pierrot Lunaire in Venice for Nuria Schoenberg’s 80th birthday, and Kurt Schwitters’ Ursonate in Folkestone last year. Teaching became a big part of life when she became Head of Voice at Trinity Laban Conservatoire, a post she held for 22 years, enthusing young singers about new music. She still teaches there, and at Canterbury Cathedral and the University of Kent, always with an ear for something new or undiscovered.
