Matthew McKinney

Tenor

Winner of the 2024 Kathleen Ferrier Awards, Scottish tenor Matthew McKinney is quickly establishing himself as an exciting and sensitive young singer. He recently made his debut at Carnegie Hall as a Song Studio Artist, before returning to Glyndebourne as a Jerwood Artist for the 2025 summer festival. In October, he will make his role debut at Glyndebourne as Peter in the world premiere of Mark Anthony Turnage’s new opera The Railway Children. Matthew is delighted to be back at WAF for the 2025 festival. He can’t wait to bring so much of his favourite music, and so much of his home, down to Devon.

He spent summer 2024 at Glyndebourne Festival as a chorister, before returning to English Touring Opera, where he performed Beethoven’s An Die Ferne Geliebte as part of the newly compiled work Do Not Take My Story for a Fairy Tale. He also covered the Tsar in a new English translation of Korsakov’s The Snow Maiden. Before this, he recorded Gastone in La Traviata (OperaGlass Works) and Rodolfo in La Bohème on Robin Norton-Hale’s forthcoming feature produced by Finite Films. Other operatic roles include Damon in Acis & Galatea for Ryedale Festival in 2022 and covering Henrik in A Little Night Music at Opera North, having sung the role for Buxton International Festival in 2021. In 2023 he sang Luigino in Il viaggio a Reims and Rustighello in Lucrezia Borgia in new productions for ETO.

As a concert soloist, performances include Bach St John Passion, Handel Messiah, Haydn Creation, Mendelssohn Elijah, Mozart Requiem, Puccini Messe Di Gloria (The Orchestra of Scottish Opera) and MacMillan All the Hills and Vales Along. April 2025 saw Matthew debut as a soloist for the Dunedin Consort’s tour of Bach’s St Matthew Passion.

Following their success at the 2024 Ferrier Awards, Matthew and duo partner Roelof Temmingh have established themselves as an accomplished recital team. Under the title ‘Finding Freedom’, they are performing a variety of programmes around the UK and Ireland, each of which sets out to breathe fresh life into the recital platform. They are thrilled to have the opportunity to further explore their deep love of song repertoire together.

Matthew is a graduate of The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, where he was gratefully supported by the Robertson Trust, John Mather Rising Star scholarship, Help Musicians (Ian Fleming) Award, Sir James Caird Travelling Scholarship, WFT Anderson Scholarship, The Underwood Trust Scholarship and The Dale Scholarship. While studying, he was taught by Professor Stephen Robertson. Matthew now studies with Robert Dean and has regular coaching with Jane Robinson and Nicky Spence.

Alongside his growing career as a soloist, Matthew has a passion for community music and music outreach. Over the years Matthew has loved conducting community choirs, touring new opera for children around England, helping run interactive music workshops for toddlers, and being a part of charity organisations like Streetwise Opera. He hopes to continue growing this part of his career for as long as he works. He feels this is a core part of who he is as a singer and musician.

matthewmckinneytenor.com

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"The most sincere, and grateful, congratulations must be to Matthew McKinney, the winner of the First Prize, for three rounds of passionate, committed singing, that in its outstanding communicative power celebrated so movingly the spirit of Ferrier herself."
David Syrus (Chair of the Jury at the 2024 Kathleen Ferrier Awards)