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Winner of the 2nd Prize at this year's Kathleen Ferrier Awards and the Karaviotis Prize at the Les Azuriales Ozone Young Artists Competition 2011, Jonathan McGovern graduated with a first-class honours degree in Music from King’s College London. He completed a PGD in Vocal Studies at the Royal Academy of Music and continued his studies with Royal Academy Opera, learning with Philip Doghan and Audrey Hyland. He graduated with distinction, receiving both a Dip RAM, the highest award for a postgraduate student, as well as ‘The Queen’s Commendation for Excellence’, given to the best all-round student of the year. He was also winner of the gold medal and 1st Prize at the Royal Over-Seas League Annual Music Competition 2010 and held a Sybil Tutton Award administered by the Musicians Benevolent Fund.
Recent operatic roles include Wu Tianshi and Pokayne in the première of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ opera Kommilitonen!; Shane Postcards from Dumbworld at Belfast Grand Opera Hosue; Delfa in Cavalli’s Il Giasone; Sid with Royal Academy Opera in John Copley’s first Albert Herring; Fiorello and Figaro cover Barber of Seville on tour with Armonico Consort Opera and
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Winner of the 2nd Prize at this year's Kathleen Ferrier Awards and the Karaviotis Prize at the Les Azuriales Ozone Young Artists Competition 2011, Jonathan McGovern graduated with a first-class honours degree in Music from King’s College London. He completed a PGD in Vocal Studies at the Royal Academy of Music and continued his studies with Royal Academy Opera, learning with Philip Doghan and Audrey Hyland. He graduated with distinction, receiving both a Dip RAM, the highest award for a postgraduate student, as well as ‘The Queen’s Commendation for Excellence’, given to the best all-round student of the year. He was also winner of the gold medal and 1st Prize at the Royal Over-Seas League Annual Music Competition 2010 and held a Sybil Tutton Award administered by the Musicians Benevolent Fund.
Recent operatic roles include Wu Tianshi and Pokayne in the première of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ opera Kommilitonen!; Shane Postcards from Dumbworld at Belfast Grand Opera Hosue; Delfa in Cavalli’s Il Giasone; Sid with Royal Academy Opera in John Copley’s first Albert Herring; Fiorello and Figaro cover Barber of Seville on tour with Armonico Consort Opera and Don Parmenione L’Occasione fa il ladro for RAO. Most recently, he made his ENO debut as Jake in the world première of Two Boys by Nico Muhly. In September he joined the Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme to reprise the role of Sid for the Britten Festival in a new production conducted by Steuart Bedford and directed by Oliver Mears. Jonathan returns to ENO this season as Yamadori Madam Butterfly.
Increasingly in demand as a recitalist, he has performed with pianists Julius Drake, Simon Lepper, Timothy End, James Baillieu and James Cheung. Recent highlights include an all Schubert programme with Julius Drake at St Olave’s Hart Street; a recital with Simon Lepper in the ‘Spring Voices’ series at the National Portrait Gallery and recitals at Chester Music Festival, the City Music Society, St James’ Piccadilly and the Forge Camden with Timothy End, with whom he held a residency at the Royal Over-Seas League recital series at the Edinburgh Festival 2010. He is a member of the Royal Academy of Music Song Circle with whom he has appeared at Wigmore Hall and at the King’s Place Festival. Engagements this season include recitals for Opera de Lille (with Simon Lepper), his Royal Over-Seas League Prizewinner’s recital in January 2012, a Kirckman Concert Society recital with pianist James Cheung and the Ferrier Celebration Concert, all at Wigmore Hall, and at the Machynlleth Festival.
In concert, he appears with the Orchestra of the City at St James's Piccadilly in Mahler's 'Songs of a Wayfarer', with the Cambridge Philharmonic in Bernstein's 'Candide' and later this year at Southwark Cathedral in Faure's Requiem.
Other future engagements include his BBC PROMS debut in The Yeoman of the Guard with Jane Glover and the BBC Philharmonic, recitals at the LSE, Oxford Lieder and London Song Festivals and a return to ENO as Papageno (cover) and for the world premiere of Michel van der Aa's opera The Sunken Garden.
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Reviews
"What makes him special? Not just his beautifully focused and warmly virile voice, matched to great musical sensitivity, but also that rarest of attributes – an instantly winning and communicative personality. "
Rupert Christiansen - The Daily Telegraph
"McGovern's baritone rang out strong and clear. . . [In] Dover Beach, McGovern established a more sombre presence now, imbuing the lyrical, unfolding vocal lines with emotional depth and sensitivity. . .McGovern's commitment to the text was sustained and intense, as he sought to do justice to the composer's detailed word painting, without over-emphasis or undue theatricality. . . maintained a quiet intensity throughout. . .[In] 'An die Geliebte'...McGovern achieved a rapt intensity here, the silvery tone of his upper range wonderfully capturing the shimmer of the glistening nocturnal sky."
Wigmore Hall recital. Claire Seymour, Opera Today
"Others making their mark included Jonathan McGovern, whose Sid was spledidly sung and acted."
John McCann, Opera Magazine, January 2012 Issue
"'...dragging cosy Jubilee Hall kicking and screaming into the new studio space Mears was at once looking to a future exemplified by Jonathan McGovern’s slick, vaguely rocker-boy, Sid (quite the star of the show not least from a vocal point of view).' (Albert Herring, Britten-Pears YAP, Snape Maltings 2011)"
Edward Seckerson -The Independent
"'Everyone else was barely out of college but delivering some seriously accomplished performances – especially Jonathan McGovern's Sid and Maria Friselier's Nancy.'"
Michael White - The Daily Telegraph
"'Three baritones were first class:.... Even stronger was the incisive, commanding Jonathan McGovern, 25, who sang Britten's 'Billy in the Darbies' from Billy Budd with blazing sincerity and infused a Rachmaninov song with palpitating passion... I would have plumped for McGovern as winner...' (Kathleen Ferrier Awards 2011; 2nd Prize) "
Rupert Christiansen - The Daily Telegraph
"Binding and offsetting this principal group are a pool of smaller roles, from which Jonathan McGovern's chameleon baritone stood out - or rather he didn't, decorously sublimating himself into his functional roles, including the voice of the Chinese father-puppet. (Maxwell Davis, Kommilitonen! RAO/Pountney/Glover 2011)"
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