JessDandy

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Contralto & Mezzo-Soprano
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News

  • 30 October 2020

    Askonas Holt welcomes contralto Jess Dandy

    Read full article

Press

  • Mozart Requiem with Tampere Philharmonic

    Tampere Hall
    Nov 2023

    • Among the quality voices stood out, one possible future star, alto Jess Dandy. Her voice with a refined range and a fateful weightiness.

  • Handel's Samson with Academy of Ancient Music

    BBC Proms, Royal Albert Hall
    Aug 2023

    • Dandy impressed with the sober, seriousness that she brought, allied to lovely dark, rich vocal tone including her fine chest register.

    • ...Jess Dandy bringing a rich, strikingly deep contralto to Micah

  • CPE Bach Heilig

    BBC Proms: Royal Albert Hall
    Aug 2023

    • The opening arietta for alto was sung by the peerless contralto Jess Dandy, whose rich tones and wonderfully solid chest voice made for one of the best moments in the concert.

  • [CD] Shostakovich: Symphony No. 14; Six Verses of Marina Tsvetayeva

    Jul 2023

    • Contralto Jess Dandy intuits and discloses the strength at the heart of the Six Poems of Marina Tsevateya, the symphony’s discmate, delivering the most opulent performance of this song cycle since Irina Bogacheva’s (latest reissue on Venezia CDVE00513). Her vocal effulgence in “To Anna Akhmatova” convinces one that, in music at least, hope can thrive in the midst of death – a surprising sentiment from the same composer whose penultimate symphony concluded with Rilke’s verses, “All-powerful is death … [it] awaits for us and thirsts for us—and weeps for us.” Perhaps Shostakovich was also aware of the poet’s more hopeful words to the young Franz Xaver Kappus: “The future stands still, but we move in infinite space.

  • Bach St Matthew Passion with Dunedin Consort

    Queen's Hall, Edinburgh
    Apr 2023

    • But the ultimate showstopper was surely alto Jess Dandy’s soul-stirring aria Erbarme dich, sung with melting warmth and impassioned amplitude in liquid partnership with lead violinist Huw Daniel’s exquisite obligato solo.

    • Jess Dandy who lived up to the description in her profile in the programme; her voice was “an instrument of velvety plangent timbre” and it was marvellous, for me the best voice of the night particularly in her aria ‘Erbarme Dich’.

  • Messiah with Academy of Ancient Music

    Barbican Centre
    Dec 2022

    • Contralto Jess Dandy brought a lovely seriousness and gravity to her performances. Dandy has a richly coloured voice and she clearly relished the opportunities to mine her strong lower register. In the name of colour, she did not hide changes of register but instead used this creatively. Her performances were characterised by a lovely well-modulated, shapely line, often enlivened by bouncing rhythms from the orchestra.

  • Recital with Martin Roscoe

    Wigmore Hall
    Jul 2022

    • Dandy has quite a distinctively direct, plangent tone quality to her voice, and throughout the recital I was struck by the real sculptural quality to her phrasing... Denn es gehet dem Menschen began dark and sober, serious indeed, though Dandy's intense phrasing was combined with a striking array of colours in her voice whilst the middle section was almost trenchant.... The songs were originally written for bass voice, but Dandy's tone quality and vocal style made the songs seem very fitting, and strikingly portentous.

  • Elgar Sea Pictures with BBC Philharmonic

    Bridgewater Hall, Manchester
    May 2022

    • Then for the big central setting of Browning’s “Sabbath Morning at Sea”, and the remainder, she brought as much passion and poetry in her singing as Elgar did to his writing.

  • Beethoven's 9th Symphony with Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique / Sir John Eliot Gardiner

    Carnegie Hall
    Feb 2020