‘a revelation’

RICHARD MORRISON, THE TIMES

Cumbrian born Jess Dandy is widely regarded as the foremost British contralto of her generation. She holds the 2025 Critics Circle Award for Female Voice.

A graduate with special excellence in Modern and Medieval Languages from Trinity College, Cambridge, she went on to train with distinction and hold a fellowship at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama.

In the 2025/26 season, Jess makes house debuts at the Salzburg Easter Festival and the Berliner Philharmonie as Floßhilde in Das Rheingold (Kirill Petrenko), at the Bayerische Staatsoper as Lady Toodle in Die Englische Katze (Katharina Wincor), and later in the summer as Cornelia in Giulio Cesare at The Grange Festival (Christian Curnyn).

On the concert platform, she appears in performances of The Dream of Gerontius with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra/Kazuki Yamada and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic/Andrew Manze, Elgar Sea Pictures with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra/Antony Hermus and Handel Messiah with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment/Eamonn Dougan, the Irish Baroque Orchestra/Peter Whelan, and the Tampere Philharmonic/Matthew Halls.

Recent highlights include her return to the BBC Proms for Stravinsky Requiem Canticles, Thomas Adès Totentanz with the Leipzig Gewandhausorchester/Thomas Adès, Berlioz Roméo et Juliette with the Bergen Philharmonic/Sir Mark Elder, Mahler Symphony No. 3 with the BBC Philharmonic/John Storgårds, Beethoven Symphony No. 9 with the Boston Symphony/Ludovic Morlot, Bach Weihnachtsoratorium with the Tampere Philharmonic/Matthew Halls, and Mahler Rückert-Lieder with the BBC Symphony Orchestra/Kristian Sallinen.

In recital, she returns to the Oxford International Song Festival and Kings Place with Keval Shah for their concert-meditation Eternity in an Hour, to Wigmore Hall with Dylan Perez, and records Schubert Winterreise with Martin Roscoe, for release in 2028 (CRD).

Jess opened the BBC Proms in 2021 (Dalia Stasevska), and was shortlisted for a Royal Philharmonic Society Award. She is a multi-faceted artist with a keen interest in ecology, body psychology and the sacred. She is the co-founder of SongPath, a mental health initiative creating musical walking trails in nature for better mental health. As artist in residence at Brantwood, Cumbria, she is creating a listening room for ecological consciousness through recorded sound, spoken word & photography (Clare Park), opening this summer.