About
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Having grown up in the North-East of Scotland, Wendy has always been a singer and actor/performer. She completed training in classical singing under Mary Plazas, Paul Nilon and Jane Anthony at Leeds College of Music in 2011, graduating with First Class Honours and the Douglas Robinson Memorial Prize for Opera. Whilst training and after graduating, she gained experience working in opera, particularly in the role of Susanna in Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro, formerly as part of her final year opera module and latterly in Leeds-based opera company Young Opera Venture.
Following a Yorkshire-based tour of Figaro, Wendy continued her first professional roles with Young Opera Venture in their tour of Opera Appetisers!, a show comprising the best elements of several operas, gaining experience in roles such as Frasquita (Carmen), Anne Page (The Merry Wives of Windsor) and Fiordiligi (Così fan tutte). Whilst based in Yorkshire, she then went on to work with The Magical Opera Company, led by Emmy Award-winning composer Martyn Swain, in the premier of his musical Ruby and the 13th Door.
In 2013, Wendy moved south to pursue the 1-year acting course at Drama Studio London. Following graduation, she was cast as the lead vocalist in children’s show Beegu at the Arts Depot and soon after was cast as Beatrice in Princess Ida at the Finborough Theatre. As well as guest appearances in concerts and cabarets, Wendy was one half of the two-person cast in East London Music Group’s one-off performance of Façade by William Walton: normally this piece is performed as a recital, with orchestra and one ‘speaker’ reciting poetry to notated rhythm, but this production was the first of its kind as a dramatized piece with two actors performing the rhythmic poetry from memory as multiple, constantly changing characters alongside the chamber orchestra of the ELMG.
Wendy later performed as Woman 1 in musical revue Closer Than Ever at the Pheasantry and in the role of Laura in the actor-musician tour of A Well-Remembered Voice, including performances at Leicester Square Theatre – Wendy’s debut performances in the West End. She has also sung with the BBC Concert Orchestra on BBC Radio 2’s Friday Night is Music Night, live from the Troxy in London, as part of West-End voices Dynamic Vocals.
Since Princess Ida, she co-founded internationally-renowned classical-crossover quartet and West End “supergroup” Ida Girls London. Wendy went straight into the Official Classical Charts in 2018 with Ida and their critically acclaimed album, Believe, and was also a Classic Brit Award nominee as part of the group earlier that year. With Ida, Wendy has performed nationally and internationally, in the West End, on luxury cruise ships, at West End LIVE in Trafalgar Square, on BBC1 and at Windsor Castle for Prince Edward. You can find out more about Ida Girls London on their website www.idagirls.com
Before 2020, outside of Ida, Wendy was performing more and more as a guest soloist at various cabaret venues in the West End and London, and also started her online YouTube series, Wendy Sings Wednesday, in June 2019. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Wendy based herself in her home town in NE Scotland and continued to post WSW videos frequently, extending to her DistanSING collaboration series, producing videos with incredible guest singers and musicians such as international Celtic-crossover star Emer Barry, Drag Idol UK-winner Karla Bear and West-End Musical Directors Nick Barstow and Tom Knowles, to name but a few. Additionally, she has performed in, hosted, produced and acted as technical director for online concert series Songbirds Livestreaming Concerts, several times as well as editing videos and online concerts on behalf of Ida Girls London.
Wendy also organized and produced her own online charity concert in December 2020, featuring multiple special guests from her home town and the surrounding area, raising money for local charities and giving performance opportunities to local groups and young performers whilst Covid-19 keeps the brakes on live concerts and events.
Wendy has always been a huge fan of performing musical theatre songs and writing pop/MT songs growing up, and gained much experience as a teen performing locally and across Scotland. Wendy performed frequently with local performing school StageStars Scotland – including the role of Miss Hannigan in Annie – and as part of Scottish Youth Theatre – her first SYT role as Joanna in Sweeney Todd – before starting formal classical singing lessons at 18 years old. During the 2 years she took out after leaving school, Wendy gained semi-professional experience with Haddo House Choral and Operatic Society in concerts and operas, including leading role Mabel in Pirates of Penzance and in the chorus of Cavalleria Rusticana and I Pagliacci.
From a musical family, Wendy also plays several instruments, including the violin, piano, orchestral percussion, flute and ukulele, which has built her a thorough understanding of music theory and harmony. She demonstrates her musical skills not only through her performances but also through her vocal arrangements for her group, Ida Girls London, as well as vocal groups FourTune, ND London Productions, Mercury and Ellington.
As a violinist, Wendy was part of local fiddle group, the Strathspey Fiddlers, where she would frequently perform to international guests as part of the group and as the group’s Scots singer, as well as in folk festivals and local ceilidh nights; as a percussionist, Wendy played regularly in Aberdeenshire-based youth orchestras; and in Wendy’s final year in secondary school, she was the Musical Director on the school show, as well as playing piano for the performances.
Wendy owes her successes in and outside of her career to the incredible support she has always had from her family, which now extends to the wonderfully loyal and supportive group of followers she now has online and in-person.