Originally from Toronto, Canada, now living in London UK, Gillian Keith has emerged as one of the leading lyric sopranos of the 21st century. Her superb voice and musicianship are at home both on the opera stage and on the concert platform‚ making her one of the most stylish and versatile artists of her generation.

A past winner of both the prestigious Kathleen Ferrier Award and the ROSL Singing Prize, and a distinguished graduate of the Royal Academy of Music, soprano Gillian Keith made her Royal Opera‚ Covent Garden debut as Zerbinetta in Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos and has gone on to repeat the role with great success at Ópera de Oviedo and Welsh National Opera. Other operatic appearances include Tytania in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at ROH and at English National Opera‚ Nannetta Falstaff and Pretty Polly in Birtwistle’s Punch and Judy‚ both for ENO‚ and Pretty Polly in Geneva. She has sung Lucinda in Conti’s Don Chisciotte for Netherlands Opera under Rene Jacobs‚ Tiny in Britten’s Paul Bunyan for the Bregenz Festival‚ Elmira in Opera North’s Croesus‚ Ginevra in Handel’s Ariodante in Halle‚ Philine in Thomas’ Mignon, and Iphis in Handel’s Jeptha, both for Buxton Festival, The Woodbird in Scottish Opera’s Siegfried, and Poppea in Basel and in Boston.

Concert performances include Oliver Knussen’s Symphony No. 2 at the BBC Proms, Exsultate, jubilate with the Royal Northern Sinfonia, the Angel in Handel’s La Resurrezione with Ars Lyrica Houston, Bach’s St Matthew Passion and Mozart’s C Minor Mass with Handel & Haydn Society, Boston, Handel’s Messiah and Silete venti with The Sixteen in Hong Kong, Sydney Opera House and New Zealand, and The Songbook with Birmingham Contemporary Music Group at Wigmore Hall. She has presented her original scripted recital Debussy And His Muse at Wilton’s Music Hall, Buxton Festival, and Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Recent appearances include the title role in H.K. Gruber’s Gloria: A Pigtail at Royal Opera’s Linbury Studio Theatre, Buxton Festival and Bregenz Festival, Bach solo cantatas with Northern Chamber Orchestra, Kurtág’s Scenes from a Novel with the Psappha Ensemble, Handel’s Messiah in Washington National Cathedral, Bach’s St Matthew Passion (Handel and Haydn Society, Boston), Miss Wordsworth in Britten’s Albert Herring with the BBC Symphony Orchestra at The Barbican, the role of Ruth Ellis in Tom Randle’s new opera Love Me To Death at The Barbican’s Pit Theatre, and the premiere of works by David Matthews and Cecilia McDowall at the Presteigne Festival. Her original scripted recital ‘The Formidable Frau’, based on the wife of Richard Strauss was received with enthusiastic praise at the 2016 Buxton Festival. This season’s and future projects include performances and a multi-disc recording of Bach solo cantatas with Armonico Consort, as well as concerts of Beethoven’s Christ on the Mount of Olives at the National Concert Hall, Dublin, Handel’s Messiah at Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, and Mozart’s Great Mass in C Minor at the Three Choirs Festival.

She has recorded the role of Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra under Sir Richard Armstrong, as well as orchestral songs by Dallapiccola, Nielsen’s 3rd Symphony, and Casella’s Le convent sur l’eau with Gianandrea Noseda and the BBC Philharmonic, all for Chandos. Other recordings include Handel’s Gloria and Bach Cantatas with John Eliot Gardiner, Handel’s Messiah and Mozart’s C Minor Mass with Harry Christophers, and Handel’s Nine German Arias with Florilegium. Her recital discs include Schubert Lieder on Marquis, and with pianist Simon Lepper Debussy: Early Songs, and Debussy Songs For His Muse for Deux-Elles, as well as Gillian Keith – bei Strauss for Champs Hill Records.

Armonico Consort began life in 2001, set up by Christopher Monks and a group of university colleagues with a shared passion for music from the Renaissance to Baroque, coupled with the imagination to find new and unusual ways to present concerts. Audiences seemed to love their engaging and imaginative approach, and most concerts in the first years sold out.
“That gave us the confidence, energy and self-belief to carry on and do more, also to take more risks with our programming, and keep on experimenting” says Christopher.
The ideas kept flowing, as did the titles “many of them were created down the pub...” including the concert programmes Naked Byrd, Supersize Polyphony, Monteverdi’s Flying Circus, Too Hot to Handel, Love Handels and Baroque around the Block. Their horizons broadened to include more contemporary repertoire but at the heart remained music of the Baroque and Renaissance,including some rarely heard gems performed by some of the world’s finest singers and period instrument players: “We take great care to craft programmes which bring as much little-known music to life as possible, and find new and imaginative ways to bring this music to audiences. I’m particularly proud of Supersize Polyphony where we perform 40 and 60-part works by Tallis and Striggio in the round, surrounding the audience, interpolated by the timeless chants of Hildegard of Bingen.” It was this particular programme which earned the group their first 5-star reviews, from The Times and the BBC Music Magazine, and there were plenty more to follow.
An education programme was fundamental to Armonico Consort from the outset and now encompasses three AC Academy after-school choirs and an in-school choir creation programme which trains teachers as choir leaders, leaving a strong legacy across the UK, to date creating almost 300 choirs and choir leaders reaching over 250,000 young people. Christopher Monks says “Having reached 20 years, we are seeing so many of these young people who have been with the group since the age of 7 now singing as AC Academy Scholars alongside the professional singers. It is so rewarding to see how the opportunities we have created have changed them not just as musicians, but as humans, and this has driven much of what we are now going on to create”.
Future developments for AC Academy include the overseas expansion of the Choir Creation programme in Kenya working in partnership with several organisations to create choirs for street children, aiming to bring them back into health care and education, and away from abuse or addiction. In addition to this, Armonico Consort has begun a major new partnership with Foundaçion Azteca in Mexico which will see them train new choir leaders across Mexico working with the Orchestra of the Americas to create the first high level symphony orchestra and chorus in the country.
In 2016, in partnership with their sponsors Phillips66, Armonico Consort created a major new initiative ‘The Voice Squad’ introducing a Phillips66 workplace choir in an effort to improve the wellbeing of employees. This has had an incredibly positive impact on the mental health of the workforce, especially now that the beneficial effects of singing on the human mind are so well established. The ‘Voice Squad’ has since been extended to workplaces and communities around the country and as of 2020, following a new partnership with the Alzheimer’s Society, now includes care homes and their first ever choir for those living with dementia. Most exciting of all is the new research which suggests that Baroque music in particular is extremely effective at unlocking memories for those affected by dementia which is something the Consort plans to fully explore as they continually strive to find new ways for their musicians to thrive in the modern world.