Singing Biography: (Click to see Teaching Biography)

Soprano Paula Downes was recently described as 'excellent' by the Boston Globe, and has been praised for her "fine upper register" by Opera News, for 'the cool beauty of her voice' by the Birmingham Post, UK, and for her 'immaculate intonation' by the Nordsee-Zeitung, Germany.

After winning a Choral Scholarship to Trinity College Cambridge University, where she read music, Paula went on to gain an Opera Diploma from London University and an Acting Certificate from the Central School of Speech and Drama. She moved to Boston, USA in 2005 to join her husband, while he completed his PhD in Musicology at Harvard, and during her four years there, she studied voice with tenor Frank Kelley; participated in Masterclasses at Harvard led by Robert Levin, Yehudi Wyner, and Daniel Stepner; undertook song and opera courses at the New England Conservatory; attended Accademia d'Amore, founded by Stephen Stubbs; and SongFest, where she was coached by John Harbison and Martin Katz. On her return to the UK in 2009, she was awarded the Nicholas Boas Bursary to particpate in Masterclasses with Emma Kirkby at the Dartington International Summer School. She is now continuing her vocal studies with Jessica Cash.

As an oratorio soloist, Paula has sung with choral societies throughout the UK, most notably in King's Chapel, Cambridge, under Stephen Cleobury, and in the New England area with Old North Festival Chorus, Marblehead under Maria VanKalken, Coro Allegro under David Hodgkins, the Providence Singers and the Newport Baroque Orchestra under Andrew Clark, the Masterworks Chorale under Sean Burton, and Chorus Pro Musica under Jeffrey Rink and Adam Boyles.

Solos with orchestra have included Bach's Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen with the South County Chamber Orchestra of Rhode Island, USA, and Mozart's Exsultate Jubilate with the Haybridge Community Orchestra, Worcestershire, UK. A regular soloist with the Central England Ensemble, Birmingham, UK, Paula has performed Vivaldi’s Nulla in mundo pax sincera in La Madeleine, Paris, and her father, Andrew Downes' Celtic Rhapsody on tour in Germany, both conducted by Anthony Bradbury. She has also performed with them under Lee Armstrong's baton, his own arrangement for soprano and strings of Andrew Downes' Songs of Love at St George's Church, Edgbaston, and at the Wednesbury Art Gallery.

Opera roles have included the creation of 'Bathsheba Everdene' in Far from the Madding Crowd by Andrew Downes for the Thomas Hardy Society, UK, and the reprisal of this role the following year for the Wednesbury Music Club, UK; 'Christian Woman' in The Prioress's Tale by Delvyn Case for Yale Institute of Sacred Music; ‘Amor’ in Cavalli's L'Egisto for Abbey Opera, UK; ‘Flora’ in Britten's The Turn of the Screw for Opera East Productions; and ‘Venus’ in both John Blow's Venus and Adonis at Cambridge University, and in Purcell's King Arthur for the Harvard Early Music Society.

Her passion and aptitude for new music has led to performances of works by Messiaen and Berio, and living composers such as Andrew Downes, Yehudi Wyner, John Harbison, Steve Reich, John Musto, Carson Cooman, and Delvyn Case. In 2008, she performed the World Premiere of Torrid Nature Scene by Nicholas Vines with the Firebird Ensemble in Cambridge MA, and then at the Tenri Cultural Institute in NYC.  She returned to Boston in 2010 to perform and record this work with the Calithumpian Consort at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and at Jordan Hall, New England Conservatory.

She has performed as a recitalist with her husband, pianist David Trippett, for numerous music clubs in the UK, and in venues such as the National Portrait Gallery, London, St Lawrence Jewry-next-Guildhall, London, Cambridge University, The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, Harvard University, the King's Chapel, Boston, MIT Chapel, Taylor House, Boston, and St John's Church, Bowdoin Street, Boston.

Paula has sung in the famed Cantata Series of the Chorus of Emmanuel Music under Craig Smith, John Harbison, Michael Beattie and Scott Metcalfe; with 'The Sixteen' under Harry Christophers; the 'Philharmonia Voices' under Andras Schiff at the Royal Festival Hall, London; and the Handel and Haydn Society Chorus under Harry Christophers, John Finney and John Nelson at Symphony Hall, Boston, and under Sir Roger Norrington at the BBC Proms 2007, on live television from the Royal Albert Hall, London.

A keen film-maker, following an intensive film-making course at the New York Film Academy, Paula embarked on a long-term project of combining film images with songs by Andrew Downes.  In December 2009, she released her first film, 'Rebecca Wasson', from the song cycle, Songs from Spoon River on youtube. The World Public Premiere of all five of the films from the cycle took place at the Birmingham Conservatoire in November 2010 for Andrew Downes' 60th Birthday concert.