Clare Hood
Clare Hood is a coloratura soprano who recently graduated with first class honours from her MMus in classical voice performance at the University of Auckland School of Music, as the holder of a University Post-Graduate Research Scholarship, and the Kate Edger Educational Charitable Trust Vinka Marinovich Award in Music, studying under Drs Morag Atchison, Te Oti Rakena, and Gregory Camp; and coached by Rachel Fuller. During her studies she has held a number of academic and performance scholarships.
Clare has a special interest in contemporary New Zealand works by emerging composers. She recently featured as the soloist for 2018 NZSO NYO Composer in Residence Josiah Carr's chamber opera dark midnight at the 2016 Lilburn Composition Prize Competition, winning both best performer and best composition. (She has also previously won the same award for her work in Callum Blackmore's I Pay Them in Eskimo Kisses in 2014). Clare's performance of NZ/US composer Annea Lockwood's I give you back for the Karlheinz Company was praised by William Dart, writing in the NZ Herald that "Clare Hood's vocal work in the edgy I give you back, dazzled with its many shades of speech and song".
Other recent performances have been Last Night of the Proms with the Auckland Symphony Orchestra, including a performance of NZ composer David Hamilton's Land, Sea, and Stars. In 2017, Clare attended the NZ Opera School, and was awarded an Auckland Arts Excellence Award by the Dame Malvina Major Foundation.
More recently, Clare appeared as Le Feu in the Wallace Opera Development Programme production of Ravel's opera L'Enfant et les Sortilèges, and made her oratorio debut as the soprano soloist in GF Hændel’s Judas Maccabaeus with the Handel Consort and Quire.
A highlight of 2018, has been a performance as an invited soloist with Albany Baroque Sessions, a baroque ensemble which included NZ baroque musicians and visiting baroque specialists Christoph Huntgeburth (baroque flute), and Irmgard Huntgeburth (baroque violin), from the University of the Arts, Berlin. She is a member of the NZ Opera Chorus, and has sung in NZ Opera’s 2018 productions of L'elisir d'amore and Aida. Later this year, Clare will appear as Madame Herz in Mozart's Der Schauspieldirektor for Opera Factory.
In September 2018, Clare will be moving to the UK to study for a post-masters PG Dip: Advanced Studies in Musical Performance in opera and vocal studies at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, where she is the grateful recipient of financial support from an Entrance Scholarship awarded by the Royal Northern College of Music, the Anne Bellam Music Scholarship, the Anne Reid Memorial Trust Scholarship, and a Graduate Women NZ Fellowship.
(Updated September 2018)
