Hello, this is my intro blog for anyone who has found themselves at my website and wants to know a little bit more about why I am here.
My name is Hester (as you will have gathered from the home page where there is an extra large picture of my face). I am a singer, with a low mezzo voice and I particularly enjoy singing early music, opera and contemporary music. I am gender fluid and use the pronouns they/them (if this is a confusing concept for you, I’ll leave a helpful link at the bottom of the page). Aside from singing, I also play the violin and a bit of piano, guitar and harmonica, and have been attempting to learn the melodeon. I also enjoy swimming, cycling, reading, fixing bikes, making zines, watching live drag and cabaret and rallying against the cis-heteronormative, racist patriarchy.
I have pretty much always been singing in one way or another, starting out with folk music and moving on to classical training in my late teens. I took a few years out from music while I was at university studying history but got back into it a year after graduating, when I joined the Morley Opera School. While there I decided to take this music thing seriously again and have been pouring all of my energy into it ever since. I’m starting a masters degree at Trinity Laban in a couple of weeks. Thanks to Covid it won’t be quite what I’d imagined but I’m looking forward to this new challenge and am excited to be moving on.
I’ve never written a blog before, it feels very 2002. I will mostly be using it to talk about music and singing, through a queer lens, as well as a place to update people on any upcoming projects and performances. HA ‘performances’…….remember those??
Anyway, having been fairly isolated for the past five months, I am in desperate need of an outlet for my thoughts. I hope they’ll be interesting to other people and perhaps provide an opportunity to expand your thinking on certain topics.
I’ll leave it there for now. xoxo
Hester Dart 