Kitty Whately, Nicholas Phan, Anna Tilbrook
Biographie Kitty Whately, Nicholas Phan, Anna Tilbrook
Kitty Whately
is one of the UK’s most characterful mezzo sopranos of the operatic stage and concert platform, and a highly acclaimed interpreter particularly of contemporary opera and art song. She has performed leading roles in world and UK premieres of opera by Mark Anthony Turnage, Missy Mazzoli, Mark Adamo and Vasco Mandonça, alongside song cycles written especially for her by Jonathan Dove, Sally Beamish, Steven Hough, Juliana Hall and Tarik O’Regan. She has received critical acclaim for performances of opera by Benjamin Britten and Bernard Hermann, as well as a huge variety of roles from the core canon of classical opera.
As a past winner of the Kathleen Ferrier award, and former BBC New Generation Artist, Kitty is in high demand as a recitalist and concert artist. She has sung with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, and her frequent performances with the BBC orchestras include De Falla’s The Three Cornered Hat (BBC National Orchestra of Wales), her BBC Proms debut in Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ Suite from Act II of Caroline Mathilde, as well as recordings of Ravel’s Sheherazade with BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Canteloube’s Songs of the Auvergne with John Wilson and BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, and songs by Rodgers & Hammerstein, Jerome Kern and Cole Porter with BBC Concert Orchestra. Recent concert performances have included Mahler Das Lied von der Erde at the Mizmorim Festival in Basel, The Dream of Gerontius with Crouch End Festival Chorus at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Beethoven’s 9th Symphony with BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Mahler’s 2nd Symphony with the orchestra of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and Mahler’s 8th Symphony with the Symphony Orchestra of Chetham’s School of Music. Kitty regularly performs recital programmes in all the major chamber venues in the UK, partnering most often with Simon Lepper, Joseph Middleton, and Anna Tilbrook, among many others. Kitty makes regular appearances on BBC Radio 3, in concert and in recordings made for Radio 3’s Composer of The Week series. She features on several discs of song, including three solo albums, as well as collaborations with other singers including Roderick Williams, Mary Bevan and Gareth Brynmor John. Kitty is the co-founder of the charity SWAP’ra (Supporting Women And Parents in Opera).
Nicholas Phan
Described by The Boston Globe as “one of the world’s most remarkable singers,” Grammy Award–winning tenor Nicholas Phan is widely recognized as an artist of distinction. With a remarkably diverse repertoire spanning nearly five centuries, he performs regularly with the world’s leading orchestras and opera companies. A dedicated recitalist and passionate champion of art song and vocal chamber music, Phan has appeared on leading recital series and chamber music stages, including Carnegie Hall, London’s Wigmore Hall, the Kennedy Center, San Francisco Performances, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, and the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. In 2010, he co-founded Art Song Chicago, an organisation committed to promoting this underrepresented repertoire, where he continues to serve as Artistic Director.
A celebrated recording artist, Phan won the 2025 Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording for his recording of Kaija Saariaho’s Adriana Mater with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the San Francisco Symphony. His album, A Change Is Gonna Come, was nominated for the 2025 Grammy Award for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album. His previous albums, Stranger: Works for Tenor by Nico Muhly, Clairières, and Gods and Monsters, were nominated for the same award in 2023, 2020 and 2017. He is the first singer of Asian descent to be nominated in the history of the Best Classical Solo Vocal Album category, which has been awarded by the Recording Academy since 1959.
Sought after as a curator and programmer, in addition to his work as artistic director of Art Song Chicago, Phan is the host and creator of BACH 52, a web series examining the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. He has created programs for broadcast on WFMT and WQXR and has also served as guest curator for projects with the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Bravo! Vail Music Festival, San Francisco Opera Center, and San Francisco Performances, where he served as the vocal artist-in-residence from 2014-2018. Phan’s programs often examine themes of identity, highlight unfairly underrepresented voices from history, and strive to underline the relevance of music from all periods to the currents of the present day.
Anna Tilbrook
is one of Britain’s most exciting pianists, with a considerable reputation in song recitals and chamber music. She made her debut at Wigmore Hall in 1999 and has since become a regular performer at Europe’s major concert halls and festivals, as well as coaching regularly for the Royal Opera, Covent Garden.
Anna has collaborated with many leading singers and instrumentalists including James Gilchrist, Lucy Crowe, Sarah Tynan, Emma Bell, Willard White, Mark Padmore, Stephan Loges, Chris Maltman, Ian Bostridge, Barbara Bonney, Victoria Simmonds, Christine Rice, Iestyn Davies, Natalie Clein, Nick Daniel, Adrian Brendel and Jack Liebeck. For Welsh National Opera she has accompanied Angela Gheorghiu, Jose Carreras and Bryn Terfel in televised concerts.
With tenor James Gilchrist she has made acclaimed recordings of 20th-century English song for Linn Records, including Vaughan Williams’ On Wenlock Edge (a finalist in the Gramophone Awards 2008), the cycles for tenor and piano by Gerald Finzi and most recently, songs by Britten and Leighton. For Chandos, James and Anna recorded a disc of Songs by Lennox Berkeley. In 2009 they embarked on a series of recordings for Orchid Classics of the Schubert Song Cycles and their disc of Die schöne Müllerin received great critical acclaim and was Editor’s Choice in Gramophone, November 2009. Recently released is Schubert’s Schwanengesang along with Beethoven’s An die Ferne Geliebte and Winterreise. With String Quartets such as the Fitzwilliam, Elias and Sacconi, she has performed Shostakovich’s chamber music throughout the UK, Mozart Piano Concertos K414 and K415 and the Elgar Piano Quintet.
Anna is also in demand as a repetiteur, continuo player and vocal coach, working for companies including the Royal Opera, Royal Ballet, Aldeburgh Festival and the London Symphony Orchestra and conductors including Sir Charles Mackerras, Vasily Petrenko, Harry Christophers and Edward Gardner. For the 2006 Buxton Festival she made her conducting debut, directing Telemann’s Pimpinone from the harpsichord.
Born in Hertfordshire, Anna studied music at York University and at the Royal Academy of Music with Julius Drake, where she was awarded a Fellowship and in 2009 became an Associate. She also won many major international accompaniment prizes including the AESS Blüthner prize and the award for an outstanding woman musician from the Royal Overseas League Society of Woman Musicians. She now lives in London.
