About

Based in Brussels, British soprano Hannah Ely specialises in the Renaissance and Baroque and has performed as a soloist in Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland and around the UK for works including Bach B minor mass, various Bach cantatas, Monteverdi Vespers (1610), Vivaldi Gloria, Mozart Requiem, Schütz Magnificat, Buxtehude Membra Jesu Nostri, Bach Christmas Oratorio, Graupner and Purcell’s Dido & Aeneas and Graupner’s Christmas Cantatas with early music ensembles including Il Gardellino, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Ensemble Schirokko Hamburg, Yorkshire Bach Soloists, Alia Mens Ensemble, Monteverdi String Band and Camerata Øresund.

Hannah also enjoys singing with a range of small ensembles around Europe, including Collegium Vocale Gent (BE), Huelgas Ensemble (BE), InVocare (CH), Siglo de Oro (UK), Musica Secreta (UK), Vox Luminis (BE), Stile Antico (UK) and The Tallis Scholars (UK). 

She is the founder and artistic director of Fieri Consort (UK) specialising in Italian and English 16th and 17th century secular music, with whom she recorded an album of solos and duets by Barbara Strozzi as well as five other albums of consort music and two new commissions. 

In 2023, she joined the American Bach Soloists Academy to perform Bach Magnificat in D as well as various cantatas in San Francisco. Selected for the Handel House Talent young artist scheme in 2018, she remains a part of the family and performs regular recitals in that historic London venue.

Over recent years, she has enjoyed exploring diminutions, ornaments and accompaniment practices, most recently with Oliver Webber and the Monteverdi String Band, with whom she will make a recording on the Resonus Classics label later this year. She is one half of Accenti - a duo with viola da gamba player Harry Buckoke. Together they explore the performance practices of madrigals for solo voice including approaches to ornamentation and intabulation of the 16th and 17th centuries.

She made her opera debut at the Brighton Early Music Festival in 2015 as Sirena in La Liberazione di Ruggiero by Francesca Caccini, returning as a soloist in Blow’s Venus and Adonis and Monteverdi’s Il Ballo delle Ingrate. She has also played both witch roles in Dido & Aeneas with the Erebus Ensemble and Ensemble Schirokko. Her Wigmore Hall debut in 2019 was with Dame Emma Kirkby's ensemble, Dowland Works, with whom she performs lute songs around the UK.

Hannah completed her Masters in Advanced Vocal Ensemble Studies at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel, Switzerland in 2018, following her studies at Manchester University and Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. She studied with Yvonne Kenny during her studies in London and continues with Dame Emma Kirkby and Deborah York.