Lauder Scholarship 2023

Rosie Cameron

This year, the Charles Wood Festival is offering 4 free scholarship places for singers from the island of Ireland to join the Charles Wood Singers. Today we introduce Rosie Cameron as our soprano scholar, and winner of the William Lauder Scholarship.

Rosie is a 21-year-old soprano from Rostrevor, County Down. She has just completed her Bachelor of Music degree at Maynooth University, graduating with First-Class honours. In the final year of her degree, she specialised in Vocal Performance as well as completing a dissertation on Ralph Vaughan Williams’ first opera Hugh the Drover. In September, she will continue her academic studies in Maynooth as she begins the MA in Performance and Musicology.

 Rosie began studying voice in 2017 under the tutelage of Julie Beattie in Warrenpoint and continues her vocal studies with Kathryn Smith in Maynooth. Rosie’s first step in choral singing came from her involvement with the Ulster Youth Choir and Ulster Youth Chamber Choir (now National Youth Choir of Northern Ireland). She performed with the Chamber Choir at the 2018 BBC Proms in the Park at Titanic Slipways which was broadcast on BBC1 and she has performed with the Ulster Youth Choir in the Ulster Hall as part of their 20th Anniversary year.

 Thanks to the strong tradition of choral singing in Maynooth, Rosie has gained experience with numerous ensembles over the last three years. She has performed with the Maynooth University Chamber Choir in several concerts and as part of the ‘Christmas at Home’ programme on RTÉ in 2020, as well as regularly performing with the Maynooth University Choral Society in performances of Fauré’s Requiem and Haydn’s Creation. At the 2021 and 2022 Maynooth Carol Services, Rosie was selected to perform the ‘O Holy Night’ solo in the stunning surroundings of St Patrick’s College Chapel which remains an extremely prominent event in her career so far. Having developed an interest in Plainchant during her undergraduate studies, Rosie is also a member of the Schola Gregoriana Maynooth, an all-female ensemble that specialises in plainchant performance.

To book tickets for this year's Charles Wood Festival, please click here.