Grace Davidson

Since 2007, Davidson has worked in partnership with composer and saxophonist Christian Forshaw, as the soprano soloist for the albums Renouncement (2007), Midwinter (2008) and Songs of Solace (2012). Their fourth album together Historical Fiction was recorded during the 2020 Covid-19 lockdown and was released on 17 September 2021.

She has taken part in all 22 live performances of Sleep around the world. Sleep has been made into a film which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah, USA in January 2020, and also has its own app.

“Even in this golden age of ‘early music’ sopranos, Grace Davidson is outstanding for her seraphic purity and evenness of tone.” – Richard Wigmore, Gramophone Magazine 2018

In 2015 Max Richter chose Davidson to be the singer on his epic venture, Sleep; a piece lasting eight hours that premiered live overnight on BBC Radio 3 from the Wellcome Collection on Euston Road, London on 17 September 2015. Davidson recorded her lullaby, heard at hourly intervals throughout the night, and vocal parts at AIR Studios and the recording was subsequently released on the Deutsche Grammophon label.

While training for a year as a chef at Prue Leith's School of Food and Wine in 1998, Davidson auditioned for London’s Royal Academy of Music and was awarded a scholarship to study there with Beatrice Unsworth and Jonathan Papp. While there she won the Early Music prize and was a finalist in the English Song Competition and the London Handel Singing Competition. She graduated with a BMus degree in 2004,and was later awarded an Associate membership of the Academy in 2016.

Grace Davidson (born 29 November 1977) is an English soprano from London who specialises in the performance of historically informed music from the Renaissance and Baroque periods. She has also recorded for prominent contemporary composers such as Max Richter, Eric Whitacre, Michael Price, and Paul Mealor, and has performed on over 140 soundtracks to date. Highlights include solos on The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug (Howard Shore, 2015), Over The Moon (Michael Price, 2020), Gunpowder Milkshake (Frank Ilfman, 2021) and The Last Duel (Harry Gregson Williams, 2021).

Davidson began her professional career singing in choirs and consorts specialising in Early Music. She has worked extensively with Harry Christophers and The Sixteen in recordings and concerts, featuring as a soloist on their Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 and Handel’s Jeptha. She also appeared alongside The Sixteen in a BBC Two documentary with Simon Russell Beale called Monteverdi in Mantua – the Genius of the Vespers.