Helen Charlston triumphed in the most recent Kathleen Ferrier Awards, walking away with the Song Prize, while alumnus of the Leeds Lieder Young Artist scheme Ilan Kurtser won the coveted Accompanist’s Prize. The Ferrier Award joins others on Helen’s mantelpiece – she is a current BBC New Generation Artist, winner of the 2018 Handel Singing Competition and Rising Star of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. In addition to her growing reputation as a fine early music singer, she received widespread praise for her recent Isolation Songbook. A creative response to a time of chaos and change, it was originally conceived as an open call-for-scores to composers and lyricists to respond creatively to lockdown, the resulting 15 new songs are by turns witty and melancholic, brash and joyful. Helen intersperses these songs with songs about nature by Brahms, Clara Schumann, Vaughan Williams and Tchaikovsky.