Famed English soprano dies of brain tumour

Famed English soprano dies of brain tumour

RIP

norman lebrecht

November 01, 2024

We are saddened to report the death, aged 71, of the singer Sarah Leonard,  a focal performer for the past half-century.

Starting out for five years in the BBC Singers, Sarah became a leading interpreter of new works by  Birtwistle, Lachenmann, Ligeti, Boulez, Dusapin, Jonathan Harvey and more. She sang new operas at La Scala, Vienna, Paris and Hamburg. She toured with the Hilliard Ensemble in the music of Arvo Pärt, and sang with The Michael Nyman Band for fifteen years.

She can be heard in the title music of the long running BBC TV series Silent Witness.

She served for the past decade as Chair of the Association of English Singers and Speakers.

Comments

  • Alistair Hinton says:

    A very sad loss indeed. Her extensive repertoire included songs by Rachmaninoff and Sorabji as well as the more contemporary repertoire for which she was principally known. She sang the demanding soprano part in the finale on my own string quintet – some 50 minutes of challenging music, which she learnt in a very short time and performed as to the manner born. She will be greatly missed. RIP, Sarah.

  • Clive McCombie says:

    This is such sad news.RiP Sarah

  • Frith Trezevant says:

    I first met Sarah Leonard when she was coming out of a practice room and I was going in. The music I had heard from outside the room was pretty astonishing in its complexity and in the apparent ease of execution.

    Sarah was a dedicated leader of the Association of English Singers and Speakers at whose competition I last met her and I’m saddened to hear of her death, so young.

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