Paula Downes
Piano, Violin, Viola, Music
Together®
Paula
Downes was
born into a family of musicians in
Worcestershire, in the United Kingdom,
and learned to play the piano and violin, and to sing from a
young age. As a
violinist during high school, Paula was the Concert
Mistress of the Midland Youth Orchestra,
and played
with the National Musicians Symphony Orchestra. She sang as a member of
the National Youth Choir of Great Britain. She gained a
Choral Scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge
University,
where she studied music, and also performed as a
violinist in the
University Chamber Orchestra .
Paula went on to train for the Birkbeck Opera
Diploma, London
University,
and took
acting classes at the Central School
of Speech
and Drama. She is
now Resident Music Tutor at Adams
House, Harvard
University,
with her
husband, musicologist and pianist, David
Trippett. She studies voice with Frank Kelley, and
has taken performance master
classes with Robert
Levin and Daniel Stepner.
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As an oratorio soloist, Paula has
sung with choral societies
throughout the UK,
most notably in King's Chapel (Cambridge, UK)
under Stephen Cleobury, and in the Boston
area with the Masterworks Chorale and Chorus Pro Musica. As a regular
soloist for the Central England
Ensemble (Birmingham), Paula
recently performed Vivaldi's Nulla in
mundo pax sincera in La Madeleine,
Paris. She has performed as a recitalist for many music clubs in the UK, and in venues such as the
National Portrait Gallery (London),
St Lawrence Jewry-next-Guildhall (London), Cambridge University, Harvard University,
and the King's Chapel, Boston.
Paula has sung with The
Sixteen under
Harry Christophers, the Philharmonia Voices
under András Schiff, the Chorus
of Emmanuel
Music under
Craig Smith, and the Handel & Haydn Society
Chorus under Sir Roger
Norrington. She also freelances as a violinist and violist. As a
teacher of music, voice, violin, viola and piano, Paula taught at South Hampstead High School for Girls in London
for three years, and now
teaches at various schools in the Boston area.
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