Born and raised in Edinburgh, Judy received her early musical training as a chorister at St Mary’s Music School, where she had lessons with Margaret Aronson. She read music at the University of Edinburgh, where she was a finalist in the Donald Tovey Memorial Prize and became the first female alto lay clerk to be appointed to the choir of St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral.
One of Malcolm Martineau’s Crear Scholars, Judy was awarded the Bucher Fraser Scholarship for postgraduate study by the University of Edinburgh, was generously supported by the Trufflehunter fund and the Sir Richard Stapley Trust, and was the inaugural recipient of the Von Ibler – Innes Schola Cantorum of Edinburgh award to help her pursue postgraduate study in London. She graduated with a Masters in vocal performance from The Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where she studied with Susan Waters.
She now maintains a portfolio of freelance singing work that ranges from a ten-person Messiah to recording major Hollywood film scores at Abbey Road Studios.
She has performed at the Proms, Aix-en-Provence Festival, London Handel Festival, Handel Festival in Halle, Edinburgh International Festival, the Barbican’s Contemporary Music Season and at the Tête-à-Tête opera festival, and on stages as diverse as Tokyo’s Suntory Hall, Wigmore Hall, the Concertgebouw, Royal Albert Hall, Vienna Musikverein and St Magnus’ Cathedral, Orkney, an actual brewery and in a cave.
She is a sought-after alto soloist for concert work, experienced in the early oratorio of Bach, Handel and Vivaldi as well as larger works including Rossini Petite Messe Solennelle, Elgar’s Music Makers and Dream of Gerontius, and the Verdi Requiem . Solo recital projects have included Debussy chansons in St Cecila’s Hall, Edinburgh; Wagner, Strauss and Mahler in the Edinburgh International Festival as part of Songlines; music by composers and poets of WW1 in St Martin-in-the-Fields; contemporary settings of Shakespeare sonnets for Song in the City, Michael Nyman’s Six Celan Songs in the Barbican, and a solo lieder recital of Schubert and Hans Gál in the Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh where her lieder singing was praised for its “dynamism and delicacy”. She has presented solo Bach cantatas with the City Bach Collective and the Kellie Consort, while work with larger ensembles includes Britten’s Phaedra, Mahler’s 3rd Symphony, and Elgar’s Sea Pictures, and she gave the second ever performance and Orcadian premiere of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ The Birds with the St Andrews New Music Ensemble, alonsgide works by Errollyn Wallen.
On stage she has sung the role of Mrs Noye in Noye’s Fludde, Juno in both Handel’s Semele and Charpentier’s Actéon changé en biche, performed in a new music and theatre piece Why does the Queen die? by Iain Burnside (revived after a successful premiere at the Oxford Lieder Festival) and played a fox and a Japanese warrior in the Tête-à-Tête opera festival. She performs regularly with period ensembles the Dunedin Consort, Marian Consort, Monteverdi Choir, La Nuova Musica, English Concert, Arcangelo, OAE and AAM, as well as larger operatic ensembles, including Scottish Opera, Opera Rara, Nevil Holt Opera, Mahogany Opera, and English Touring Opera. In Opera Magazine her performance in the role of Äbtissin in Hans Gál’s opera Das Lied der Nacht was highlighted; “contralto Judy Brown lent distinction … brought all the requisite steadiness, purity, dignity and command.”
Recent opera work has included the Buxton International Festival where she covered the role of Carmen, sang in Verdi’s Ernani and appeared on stage with Carlos Acosta (in her capacity as singer, not as a dancer, thankfully for all involved). She spent much of 2024 on tour with ETO, giving 64 performances of Manon Lescaut, The Rake’s Progress and a new opera for key stage 2 children about the Victorian sewerage crisis; The Great Stink, in which she portrayed Queen Victoria, Maria Bazalgette and, most vividly and memorably, an actual poo.
Recent performances include Rimsky Korsakov’s The Snowmaiden, four new short contemporary operas presented in promenade in venues across England with English Touring Opera, Handel’s Messiah in Manchester Cathedral, the Verdi Requiem for Epsom Choral Society, Elgar’s Music Makers for Brockham Choral Society and a programme of Schnittke, Ligeti and Schoenberg with the Edvard Grieg Kor under Ed Gardner in Norway. Projects for 2025 include Messiah solos with Dunedin Consort at La Folle Journée festival in Nantes, B Minor Mass with Kristian Bezuidenhout and the English Concert, both Elgar’s Music Makers and Sea Pictures in Fakenham, Norfolk, Mendelssohn’s Elijah for the Addison Singers, Feel the Spirit and Rio Grande by Constant Lambert for Norwich Philharmonic, and Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis for Crouch End Festival Chorus.
A keen ceramicist, when not making loud noises on stage Judy can be found at the potter’s wheel, specialising in industrial-sized mugs to keep up with her capacity for tea, and little jugs perfect for adding water to whisky, thus combining her two great loves (aside from music): pottery and single malts.
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Photo: Helena Cooke
