
Bethany Shepherd (1989) discovered her voice by accident while dancing in musicals in her home town of Armidale, Australia. She decided to further her musical education undertaking a Bachelor of Music in Performance at the Queensland Conservatorium of Music, studying under Joseph Ward and Lisa Gasteen. Having uncovered a passion for historically informed performance practice, she moved to the Netherlands in 2013 to undertake a Master in Early Music at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague.
While studying at the Royal Conservatory, together with friends she created the ensemble Le Voci delle Grazie, which specialized in female early Italian Baroque music. With this group she performed in early music festivals across Europe and took part in the prestigious eeemerging programme designed to support young talented early music ensembles.
Bethany recently became a core member of the Dutch Chamber Choir (Nederlands Kamerkoor) where she has sung everything from Franco-Flemish polyphony to Stockhausen, working with renowned choral conductors such as Peter Dijkstra, Paul van Nevel, and Martina Batič. In addition to the Dutch Chamber Choir, Bethany sings with many Dutch ensembles including the Radio Choir (Groot Omroepkoor) and the Dutch Bach Society (Nederlandse Bachvereniging).
As a soloist, Bethany has performed major oratorio repertoire by composers such as Bach, Handel, Vivaldi and Graun. On the opera stage she has sung the amongst others roles of La Fée (Cendrillon, Massenet), Belinda (Dido and Aeneas, Purcell) and Norina (Don Pasquale, Donizetti).
In addition to singing, Bethany enjoys dancing, reading and baking – both the cooking and the eating part! She lives in the Netherlands with her partner and their very spoilt cat.