Lancashire-based Margaret McDonald – better known as Maggie – sings regularly in major venues and cathedrals in the UK and abroad. She works with many leading conductors, encompassing an extensive repertoire of oratorio and concert work, opera, contemporary and light music. As well as singing with numerous choral societies nationwide, she has sung on the operatic stage for Glyndebourne Festival and Touring Opera, ENO, Opera North, CBTO, Chelsea Opera Group, Scottish Opera, and Scottish Opera Go Round. She has recorded a variety of works for Nimbus, Marco Polo and the BBC, including Maxwell Davies’s The Jacobite Rising and Sea Elegy.

She now combines a busy singing schedule with her vocal consultancy work, being in demand for masterclasses, workshops and examining. She has taught at the RSAMD and RNCM, where she indeed studied. She is vocal coach for the Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus and the Hallé Choir.

Maggie’s concert work has ranged dramatically from Mahler’s 3rd Symphony in Huddersfield Town Hall with Nicholas Cleobury and Verdi’s Requiem for the Buxton Festival, to the Good Old Days at the City Varieties, Leeds. Earlier this year she sang two concerts with the Hallé Choir, performing Elgar’s Music Makers and Rachmaninov’s Vespers. In the previous year she sang Child of our Time with the Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus and the Halle Orchestra, amongst others nationwide and abroad. She has just recorded a CD with the Fairey Brass Band, sung a specially commissioned piece by Phillip Lawrence in the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall as part of the City of Culture celebrations, and performed the world premiere of Equiano’s Lament by Borthwick with the Hull Sinfonietta.

Future concerts include performances of Elgar’s Sea Pictures and Music Makers, Tippett’s Child of our Time,Mendelssohn’s Elijah, and duo recitals with the pianist Jan Swynnoe and Peter Crockford. Next year she will sing for Leeds Festival Chorus with Manchester Camerata, conducted by Simon Wright, as part of the Leeds International Concert Season.