Natalie Windsor studied Music with Japanese at Keele University, developing her voice further with a postgraduate degree at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. Natalie studied voice with Steven Harper, Sue MacAllister, Sue Hallam, Clare Hogan Taylor, Matthew Willis, Louise Crane, Nicholas Powell, and voice with Early Music with Andrew King. She currently performs and teaches in the UK, and sings with Sinfonia Chorale and the Richard Roddis Singers.
Originally from Stoke-on-Trent, owing to the city’s lack of cathedral, Natalie grew up and studied amidst a thriving, passionate amateur music scene performing grand choral works in the newly refurbished Victoria Hall, Hanley, and some local productions of musicals and opera. Keele University’s music department had a great leaning in turn of the 20th century music, and in addition to this, Keele Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir and Keele Bach Choir, along with other ensembles, were at their peak, including ambitious local collaborations for Vaughan Williams’ Sea Symphony and Berlioz’ Grande messe des morts. The university, with local musicians performed Rutter’s radiant Magnificat, Bach’s Mass in B Minor, an opera gala evening and semi-staged productions of Dido and Aeneas and Acis and Galatea.
She performs a broad range of repertoire with vocal colours and improvisation, from Early Music to Jazz.
Highlights have included singing the role of Dido at the Westminster Theatre in North Staffordshire, Handel’s Galatea in a semi-staged production at Keele, and Belinda in Opera Ingestre’s production of Dido and Aeneas. In other works Natalie performed as soloist in Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms with the London LLB Orchestra and Choir, Mozart’s Requiem with The Barbara Walton Singers, and Rossini’s Petite messe solennelle with Derby Bach Choir, Beate Toyka and Tom Corfield. In The Westlands, Newcastle, any wonderful and varied performances with David Burrowes, The Barbara Walton Singers and the 18th Century Sinfonia; Handel’s Dixit Dominus in Derby Cathedral, with The Derwent Singers and a baroque ensemble led by Nicolette Moonen; performing Richard Roddis’ ‘Lauda creatoris’ with Sinfonia Chorale in Nottingham.
After university, alongside classical development, Natalie immersed herself in jazz music and improvisation, exploring the boundaries between contemporary and baroque ornamentation. Natalie taught with Derby Jazz and recorded an album with jazz pianist Matt Ratcliffe, for Tariq Abdulla’s ‘Scientific Songs of Praise’, which went viral, and some was featured on Richard Dawkins’ website.
Throughout years travelling through the mountainous wilds of Wester Ross with family, Natalie developed a love for the Scottish Gaelic language and began a quest to learn the pronunciation, and story of the once suppressed language and culture. This birthed a love for Scottish folk, its haunting melodies and complex rhythms, which led to performing an acappella set of Gaelic mouth music, to stunned and rain-soaked festival goers, at Exile Festival last year.
Recitals and performances are planned in the future with guitarist and lutenist Jonathan Priestley, Early Music singer Carmel Edwards and blues pianist David Holloway.
Natalie Windsor 