Guildhall School singer Alexandra Lowe to join the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme for 2020/21 season

Guildhall is delighted to announce that soprano Alexandra Lowe has been selected by the Royal Opera House as a Jette Parker Young Artist (JPYA) for the 2020/21 season.

The Programme supports the artistic development of talented singers at the beginning of their careers. Young Artists are employed as salaried members of The Royal Opera and immersed in the life of the Royal Opera House over a two-year period. The specially tailored programme includes extensive daily coaching in languages, stagecraft and vocal techniques, alongside training for cover roles, performing in concerts and for smaller roles on the main stage. It is generously supported by the Oak Foundation.

Lowe is currently at the National Opera Studio and recently completed her Artist Diploma with distinction at Guildhall School. She previously graduated from the Royal Northern College of Music with a first-class honours. Lowe has been awarded the Clonter Opera Prize, the Elisabeth Harwood Memorial Prize, the Joyce and Michael Kennedy Award for singing Strauss, the Bessie Cronshaw Song Cycle Prize, the Alexander Young Song Prize, the Oncken Song Prize, the Elsie Thurston Song Prize and the Joyce Budd Prize at the Kathleen Ferrier Young Singers Bursary.

She is the recipient of a Silver Medal from the Worshipful Company of Musicians and of the Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation Sarah Brightman Scholarship, which supported her two-year Masters degree at the Royal Northern College of Music. In 2018 she was selected to be a Samling Artist and became a Drake Calleja Scholar the following year.

Lowe joins the prestigious programme in September 2020: it is formed of four singers, selected from more than 424 applicants from more than 25 countries across the globe. These artists follow in the footsteps of 115 JPYA alumni who have successfully completed the programme since its inception in 2001.

The Jette Parker Young Artists are:

• British soprano Alexandra Lowe
• Ukrainian mezzo-soprano Kseniia Nikolaieva
• Russian tenor Egor Zhuravskii
• Congolese bass Blaise Malaba

The process for the selection began in August 2019, with initial auditions being held blind by pianist, conductor and répétiteur Susanna Stranders, vocal repertory coach Caroline Dowdle and JPYA Artistic Director David Gowland.

Sixty-eight singers from 15 countries were selected for the first round of live auditions, with twenty-eight singers progressing to the second round, involving one-to-one sessions with JPYA staff, and panels auditions with a team including casting directors, guest artists and members of the JPYA team.

The final shortlist of eleven singers auditioned on the Royal Opera House’s main stage with the decision-making panel joined by Antonio Pappano, Music Director of The Royal Opera and Oliver Mears, Director of Opera.  

Two Guildhall alumni, tenors Filipe Manu and Andrés Presno joined the scheme in the 2018/19 season and continue the Programme into their second year.