Jimmy Holliday is in his last year of study at the Royal College of Music’s
International Opera School as the Martin Harris scholar supported by a Douglas & Kyra
Downie Award. He is also supported by the Josephine Baker Trust
and last year was awarded the inaugural Richard Van Allan Award administered
by the Musicians Benevolent Fund. He is also the current Hampshire Singer
of the Year having won the 10th anniversary of the competition last year.He began singing as a chorister at Lichfield Cathedral and furthered his choral education under Mike Brewer and the National Youth Choir of Great Britain, and David Hill at Winchester Cathedral. After five years as a Lay-Clerk at Winchester Cathedral, Jimmy returned to London to take up his studies at the RCM and now regularly works with EXAUDI, Tenebrae, The Sixteen, The Gabrieli Consort, Ensemble Plus Ultra, The Tallis Scholars and The BBC Singers.
Jimmy is a regular oratorio performer with highlights including Monteverdi 1610 Vespers, J.S. Bach St John Passion, Handel Messiah, Haydn Creation, Mahler Symphony No 8 at The Sage, Gateshead, Walford-Davies’ The Pied Piper with Tenebrae at The Gregynog Festival and Stravinsky’s Threni and The Flood with the CBSO in Symphony Hall, Birmingham. Jimmy won the RCM’s Lieder competition in 2007 and has sung Schubert’s Schwanengesang at Warwick University, Schumann’s Dichterliebe in Winchester Cathedral and Brahms’ Vier ernste Gesänge at Newbury Arts Centre. At the RCM he has participated in master-classes with Sarah Walker, Roger Vignoles, Graham Johnson, Peter Harvey, Philip Langridge and Dame Kiri Te Kanawa.
Jimmy’s first operatic role was Father Truelove in Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress at The Dartington International Summer School. Since then roles include King Saul in a new opera David and Goliath by Sam Hogarth, Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo Caronte for the Suffolk Villages Festival, Britten’s Noye’s Fludde Noye at Romsey Abbey, Handel’s Acis & Galatea Polyphemus for Woodhouse Opera, Sleep in Purcell’s Fairy Queen with Harry Bicket and The English Concert, and The Judge in a new opera commissioned by Finchley Children’s Music Group called The Jailer’s Tale by Malcolm Singer. At the RCM scenes have included Lordzing’s Wildschutz Baculus, Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte Don Alfonso, Donizetti’s Anna Bolena Enrico, Gounod’s Faust Mephistophales and Verdi’s Falstaff Pistola. Also at the RCM, Jimmy has performed the roles of Dr Bartolo in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro, Badger/Parson in Janacek’s Cunning little Vixen, Bottom in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Sarastro in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte. He will be singing the role of Kecal in the summer term’s production of Smetana’s The Bartered Bride.
Jimmy is taught by Graeme Broadbent (RCM professor and formerly Royal Opera House, Covent Garden).