Victoria read Music at King’s College, London, and received her LRAM diploma in singing teaching from the Royal Academy of Music. She then gained a Masters with Distinction in Vocal Performance from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance; during her time at Trinity Laban she was awarded the Elliot Rosenblatt Memorial Scholarship and the Eva Malpass Scholarship, as well as winning the Paul Simm Opera Prize, the Linda Hirst Prize for Excellence in Contemporary Vocal Music, and the English Song Duo Prize (alongside pianist Francesca Lauri).

Victoria was a finalist in the inaugural New Voices Singing Competition at the Northern Aldborough Festival. She has sung in operatic productions for companies including Barefoot Opera, Opera Loki, About Turn Theatre and the New London Opera Group, appearing at the Tête à Tête, Grimeborn and Edinburgh Fringe Festivals, and is equally at home on the concert stage, where she has performed as soprano soloist in oratorios including Haydn’s Nelson Mass, Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle, Fauré’s Requiem and Handel’s Messiah as well as appearing in recital across the UK.

As well as her solo work, Victoria sings regularly with the professional choir of St John’s Wood Parish Church and is a visiting singing teacher at More House School and The Hall School. She is also a keen composer and improviser; she debuted her first semi-improvised song cycle, Ave Femina, in May 2022 and is currently working on a second.

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Alex Carpenter

A music graduate of King’s College London and Goldsmiths, University of London, Alex enjoys a busy freelance career as a music teacher, singer, conductor, accompanist, and composer.

Alex is Company Musical Director of the New London Opera Group, with whom he has conducted award-winning productions of Patience, The Yeomen of the Guard and Utopia Limited at the International Gilbert & Sullivan Festival, as well as operas including Carmen, Dido & Aeneas, and Vaughan Williams’ Hugh the Drover.

An experienced and versatile tenor, Alex has performed as a soloist in Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle, CPE Bach’s St John Passion, Dvořák’s The American Flag, Handel’s Messiah, and Haydn’s Nelson Mass. Alex’s stage roles haveincluded Alfred (Die Fledermaus), Ralph (HMS Pinafore), andAlexis (The Sorcerer), for which he won the Best Male Voice Award at the 2023 International G&S Festival. A former semichorus member of The Bach Choir and Choral Scholar of Fulham Camerata, Alex sings regularly with the professional choir at St John’s Wood Parish Church and with other churches and choral societies across London.

Inspired in part by his experiences with Lyra, as a composer Alex specialises in choral and vocal music, from originalcarols and folksong arrangements to settings of war poetry. A tutor with Wandsworth Music, Alex has also written for children’s choir, his setting of Edward Lear’s ‘The Duck and the Kangaroo’ premiering at the Wandsworth Mayor’s Gala Concert in 2017.

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