Vocal Summer School

• One-to-one singing lessons 
• One-to-one vocal coaching 
• One-to-one Alexander Technique 
• Introduction to Improvisation  
• Daily group workshops including Acting/Stagecraft, Italian Recitative, German Leider and French Melodie 
• Daily Yoga and Mindfulness sessions  
• Performance Classes  
• Audition preparation
• Masterclasses with Miranda Wright and Karen Cargill
• Participation in final concert held in the magnificent St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral. 
• Informal concerts by staff and participants  
• Fun and engaging evening activities including a walking tour of Edinburgh’s historic city centre and movie nights.  

• Kate Aitken - Course Director
• Anna Michels - Vocal Coach
• Robin St Clair -Alexander Technique
• Jean Johnson-Yoga & Mindfulness

To find out more about our Vocal Summer School course leaders please visit the Our Staff page.

After graduating with a Masters in French Language and Literature at the University Paris 7 Denis Diderot, I furthered my studies as a classical soprano and graduated from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. 

Through the RCS, I’ve benefited from the rich mentoring of Prof. Chris Underwood, keeping a vital and direct link to the poets and composers of the late French 19th Century. 

Through my musical training I’ve been fortunate to work with specialists of the French Mélodie Repertoire (Helen Abbott, Roy Howat in the UK). As a singer, I participated in masterclasses with Véronique Gens, Michel Piquemal, François Leroux and Michelle Command.
I’ve been teaching the French Language class for singers and the French Repertoire classes for the Vocal Department at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland since 2018. Since 2021, I also give French Repertoire and Phonetic workshops to the Vocal students Royal Northern Conservatoire of Music, Manchester. 

As French Coach for the Gibson Opera School at the RCS, I’ve worked on the recent productions of “Les Mamelles de Tirésias” , “Le Dialogue des Carmélites”  and the acclaimed production of “L’étoile”, by Chabrier, and for Grange Park Opera’s Werther for the 2023 season.
 

Helen Lawson was born in Northumberland and studied singing at the Royal College of Music and the National Opera Studio in London.  The award of several scholarships enabled her to pursue further studies in German Lied repertoire with Prof. Erik Werba in Munich, and Prof. Konrad Richter in Stuttgart.

Helen has appeared as soloist in opera houses at home and abroad, including English National Opera; City of Birmingham Touring Opera; English Touring Opera and De Vlaamse Opera Antwerpen.  Among the roles she has sung are Butterfly (Puccini: Madama Butterfly), Countess Almaviva (Mozart: Le Nozze di Figaro), Pamina (Mozart: Die Zauberflöte); Tatiana (Tchaikovsky: Eugen Onegin), and Senta (Wagner: Der Fliegende Holländer). She was a member of the Bayreuther Festspielchor from 1989 to 2001.
 
She has appeared as soloist in concerts and oratorio, including performances of Britten’s ‘War Requiem’ and Verdi’s ‘Requiem’ at the Royal Albert Hall, conducted by Sir David Willcocks. She has given song recitals in the UK and abroad.

Helen trained as a breathing pedagogue (Osenberg/Parow) in Germany and for several years attended Richard Miller’s Institute of Vocal Performance Pedagogy at Oberlin College, Ohio, USA.  She is a certified CoreSinging teacher (Meribeth Dayme) and in 2011 she was awarded a scholarship by the English Speaking Union which enabled her to travel the United States to observe vocal teaching at other American institutions. 

Having taught singing in German universities (Bayreuth and Bamberg), Helen moved to Glasgow in 2002 to take up the post of Lecturer in Vocal Studies at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland).  Alongside individual vocal coaching at post-graduate and under-graduate levels, Helen teaches classes in phonetics and Italian and German repertoire. Helen is also a visiting voice coach at the University of Aveiro in Portugal.
 

Described as "a real musician of great skill and sure touch" (Theatre Reviews North), Toby Hession is a British pianist, conductor and composer, currently serving as a répétiteur and conductor on the music staff of Scottish Opera, where he was formerly an Emerging Artist. He studied in the Opera School of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama (2019-21) and is a prize-winning graduate of Clare College, Cambridge (BA and MPhil, 2015-19), where he held a Choral Scholarship. He is also a proud alumnus of the prestigious Georg Solti Accademia, and Chetham's School of Music.
 
Toby has worked as music staff on productions for several of the UK’s leading opera companies. Opera credits as music staff include: Ernani, La Canterina (Buxton International Festival); Semele (Glyndebourne Opera); Ainadamar [UK premiere] (Scottish Opera, Welsh National Opera); La Traviata, Oedipus Rex, Albert Herring, Marx in London! [UK premiere], Carmen, Il Trittico, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Candide, Così fan tutte, Don Giovanni, Falstaff, Mavra, The Miserly Knight, The Gondoliers, Utopia Ltd. (Scottish Opera); Pelleas et Melisande (Byre Opera); Il Segreto di Susanna, Zanetto, Rita, Dido & Aeneas, The Angel Esmeralda (world premiere) (GSMD). As an accompanist, Toby has played in venues including The Barbican, St. Martin-in-the-Fields, and St. Giles’ Cathedral (Edinburgh), for artists including Wallis Giunta, Zoe Drummond, Dima Bawab, Isabel Pfefferkorn, Aidan Coburn, and Adam Maxey; he has accompanied masterclasses with Sir Thomas Allen, Thomas Quasthoff (Edinburgh International Festival), Wallis Giunta, Neal Davies, Andrew Staples, Nicholas Mulroy, Yvonne Howard, and Roger Vignoles.
 
Highly in-demand as a composer, Toby has had works commissioned and/or recorded by The King’s Singers (Master of Music, featured on “GOLD”), Voces8 (She Walks in Beauty, featured on “Enchanted Isle”), Scottish Opera, The New World Symphony (Miami, FL), and Ensemble Perspectives (FR). His short scenes Told By An Idiot and In Flagrante, written in collaboration with librettist Emma Jenkins, were commissioned by Scottish Opera and performed across Scotland to critical acclaim as part of their flagship Opera Highlights tours in 2022-23 and 2023-24 respectively. Along with Jenkins, he has been commissioned to compose a new one-act opera entitled A Matter of Misconduct!, which is scheduled for performances in 2025 at Scottish Opera (Glasgow and Edinburgh) and Opera Holland Park. His music has been heard in major venues across the globe, and broadcast by ClassicFM, BBC Radio3, and various other European media channels. Much of Toby’s music is published by Edition Peters.
Toby is also enjoying a growing career as a conductor of a varied repertoire. He has conducted performances of Carmen and La Traviata for Scottish Opera, and in 2024 made his debut at the Buxton International Festival, conducting Haydn’s La Canterina. In 2025, he looks forward to conducting the Lakeland Sinfonia in concert, as well as conducting performances of Trial by Jury, alongside his own A Matter of Misconduct! for Scottish Opera and Opera Holland Park. He has previously worked as an assistant conductor to Tim Redmond, Stuart Stratford, Adrian Kelly, Dane Lam, Duncan Ward, Ben Gernon, Dominic Wheeler, Chad Kelly, Stephen Higgins, and Sian Edwards, among others. During his time at Cambridge, he conducted extensively for Cambridge University Music Society (CUMS), holding the coveted position of Conducting Scholar during his MPhil year (2018-19), and leading the Cambridge University Orchestra on a tour of Southern Poland in 2019.

Ava is a recent graduate of the BA Acting course at The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. As an actress, she has worked for The National Theatre of Scotland, Perth Theatre, Wonder Fools and BBC/Netflix. Ava is also a facilitator, writer and co-founded The Showmen's Theatre Company. She was a member of the Scottish Opera Young Company from 2020-2022.