About

Based in Brussels, British soprano Hannah Ely specialises in the Renaissance and Baroque and has performed as a soloist in Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland and around the UK with early music ensembles including Collegium Vocale Gent, Il Gardellino, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Vox Luminis, Ensemble Schirokko Hamburg, Yorkshire Bach Soloists, Alia Mens Ensemble, Monteverdi String Band and Camerata Øresund, working with directors Philippe Herreweghe, Alex Potter, Stephen Devine, Peter Spissky, Oliver Webber, Olivier Spilmont, Lionel Meunier and Peter Seymour.

Hannah also enjoys performing with a range of ensembles around Europe, including Collegium Vocale Gent (BE), Huelgas Ensemble (BE), Gli Angeli Genève (CH), InVocare (CH), Siglo de Oro (UK), Musica Secreta (UK), Vox Luminis (BE), The Monteverdi Choir & Orchestra (UK) and The Tallis Scholars (UK). 

She is the co-Artistic Director of Brighton Early Music Festival (UK) with her colleague Olwen Foulkes. The Festival takes place each Autumn and is known internationally for its lively and inspired multi-disciplinary programming that bring audiences together from all parts of society, challenging outdated preconceptions of early music. As well as this she is enjoying being part of the Purbeck Art Weeks Festival (UK) team as Music Director, in the South-West of England. What began over twenty years ago as a visual arts festival, has become a celebration of all the arts, with music events threading through the three weeks of open studios and bringing musicians and artists together in the beautiful surroundings of the Purbecks each May - June.

She is the founder and artistic director of Fieri Consort (UK) specialising in Italian and English 16th and 17th century secular music, with whom she recorded an album of solos and duets by Barbara Strozzi and her contemporaries as well as five other albums of consort music and two new commissions.  Fieri will collaborate with Camerata Øresund and Peter Spissky to make a recording of Graupner Christmas Cantatas in 2025 on the Ramée label (Outhere).

In 2023, she joined the American Bach Soloists Academy to perform Bach Magnificat in D as well as various cantatas in San Francisco. Selected for the Handel House Talent young artist scheme in 2018, she remains a part of the family and performs regular recitals in that historic London venue.

Over recent years, she has enjoyed exploring diminutions, ornaments and accompaniment practices, most recently with Oliver Webber and the Monteverdi String Band, with whom she has made a recording on the Resonus Classics label - released 2024. She is one half of Accenti - a duo with viola da gamba player Harry Buckoke. Together they explore the performance practices of madrigals for solo voice including approaches to ornamentation and intabulation of the 16th and 17th centuries. They were selected for an artist residency in Spring 2024 producing a concert video.

She made her opera debut at the Brighton Early Music Festival in 2015 as Sirena in La Liberazione di Ruggiero by Francesca Caccini, returning as a soloist in Blow’s Venus and Adonis and Monteverdi’s Il Ballo delle Ingrate. She has also played both witch roles in Dido & Aeneas with the Erebus Ensemble and Ensemble Schirokko. Her Wigmore Hall debut in 2019 was with Dame Emma Kirkby's ensemble, Dowland Works, with whom she performs lute songs around the UK.

Hannah completed her Masters in Advanced Vocal Ensemble Studies at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel, Switzerland in 2018, following her studies at Manchester University and Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. She studied with Yvonne Kenny during her studies in London and continues with Dame Emma Kirkby and Deborah York.