Cheryl Hawkins

Born and educated in Bedfordshire, Cheryl is well known in the region.  She studied at the Royal Academy of Music with Marjorie Thomas, where she was a frequent prizewinner and soprano Gold Medallist.  She won the Incorporated Society of Musicians Young Concert Artist series and was a finalist in the GKN English Song Award.  She also studied on a scholarship with Pierre Bernac in France .

As a recitalist Cheryl has sung extensively in both Britain and Europe and has appeared on the South Bank, on radio, and in many major music festivals.  She has performed much of the standard oratorio repertoire, most recently Tippett’s Child of Our Time, Bach’s Matthew Passion, Brahms Requiem in Ely Cathedral with Stephen Cleobury and St. John Passion in Salisbury Cathedral.

Her operatic roles include Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, Fiordilidgi in Cosi fan Tutte, Ellen Orford in Peter Grimes, Tatyana in Eugene Onegin and Countess Adele in Count Ory.

She has premiered several new works, notably Six Songs of Love, for the Bergere Trio (soprano, clarinet and piano), and Sweet Sounds and Airs, for soprano, chorus and orchestra, both written by Michael Rose.  In January last year she sang in the first performance of a new oratorio by Tunde Jegede in this theatre and in April a new setting of the Magnificat  by Philip Stopford.

As well as performing, Cheryl runs a thriving teaching practice and is a member of the voice clinic team at Milton Keynes hospital.  She has created the Dawn Chorus, a course for non-singers who want to sing but have never dared to try.  This attracted much media attention on both radio and TV, has been run at the Stables Wavendon and has featured on Radio 4’s “Room for Improvement’’.