Born in Iowa City, Iowa, Lydia Brotherton graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. Hons. in Music from Brown University and completed her Masters studies in Historical Performance at Boston University. Her undergraduate thesis on Purcell’s The Fairy Queen was published as winner of Brown’s University Prize. Other awards include a Swiss Federal Stipendium and scholarship from Early Music America. She currently studies with Jennifer Dakin, and has undertaken masterclasses with Harry Bicket, Andrew Parrott, Joshua Rifkin, and Margreet Honig. As recipient of a prestigious U.S. Fulbright performing arts grant, she studied at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in 2010-2011.
Recent solo engagements include Handel and Bach arias with the English Concert at the Foundling Museum in London; BWV 29 with Harry Christophers and the Handel and Haydn Society in Symphony Hall; concert performances with Ensemble Phoenix Munich at the Prague Spring Festival; Bach’s St. John Passion with the Harvard Baroque Orchestra; BWV 75 with Emmanuel Music in Boston; and virtuosic Italian and English madrigals with Laurence Cummings and the Handel and Haydn Society.
Lydia has performed with the Grammy-nominated Boston Early Music Festival in their Chamber Opera Series and biannual Festival, and with Tragicomedia under Stephen Stubbs, the Bach cantata series at Emmanuel Music in Boston, the Clarion Society and New York Collegium, and she has toured internationally as soloist with the Boston Camerata and the Tero Saarinen Dance Company in their joint production of Borrowed Light. She appeared as a soloist with the Boston University Baroque Orchestra under Martin Pearlman, in the title role of Eccles’ opera Semele and Bach’s Wedding Cantata (BWV 202), and with Boston Baroque and Il Furioso, in Monteverdi’s Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda. She has also sung under Paul O’Dette, Ivars Taurins, Steven Fox, Michael Beattie, Edward Elwyn Jones, Scott Metcalfe, John Harbison and Andrew Lawrence-King.
Current season/future plans: European tour of Bach's B-minor Mass with the Ambronay Baroque Academy Orchestra, c. Sigiswald Kuijken, Vagaus Juditha triumphans c. Andrea Marcon with La Cetra Barockorchesters Basel and Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, St. John Passion with Mark Padmore (Aldeburgh Easter Weekend with Britten-Pears Baroque Orchestra), a concert with Boston Camerata at the Cité de la Musique in Paris; releases of The Rose of Sharon (Ensemble Phoenix/Harmonia Mundi), Virgo Sancta Caecilia (Ensemble Candens Lilium/West Deutsche Rundfunk and Raumklang), Blow’s Venus & Adonis, and Charpentier’s Actéon (Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra/Radio Bremen and CPO).