BIOGRAPHY
“...the part of Barbara was memorably taken by Miranda Ostler who not only sang it beautifully but also gave the character a joie de vivre and a profound humanity that put flesh on a fascinating but dreamlike figure.”
Miranda Ostler completed her Masters in Vocal Performance with Distinction at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance in June 2024, where she studied with Sophie Grimmer and Robert Bottriell. She was the Kathleen Roberts Vocal Scholar and winner of the 2022 Paul Simm Opera Prize for the most promising opera student.
With Trinity Laban Opera, Miranda has appeared as Fenena in scenes from Verdi’s Nabucco (April 2024), Female Chorus in Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia (April 2023), and in the title role of Strozzi! (a jukebox opera of music by Barbara Strozzi) at Blackheath Halls (July 2022). She also created the role of Kael in Edward Jessen’s operatic sonic theatre work Syllable (January 2022). Further operatic work includes the chorus quartet in the premiere of Robin Fielder’s Serenoid at the Tête-à-Tête Opera Festival; Third Shepherd in Blow’s Venus and Adonis with Blackheath Halls Opera; Chérubin in scenes from Massenet’s Chérubin and the Comtesse in Milhaud’s La mère coupable; and Cherubino in Puzzle Piece Opera’s online production of Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro.
Miranda is particularly passionate about collaborating with living composers. She was vocal soloist for Julian Marshall’s award-winning dance-film Yearning, and appears as a backing vocalist with The Rupa Ensemble on his album The Angel in the Forest, alongside James Gilchrist and cellists from the Philharmonia Orchestra. She sings and speaks in multiple languages on Rebecca Galian Castello’s album The Undernetting, and has undertaken a wide range of session work, including projects with the Eric Whitacre Singers and the London Contemporary Orchestra. She has recorded several recent discs with the London Choral Sinfonia under Michael Waldron, and deputises for the BBC Singers and Tenebrae.
Miranda is a member of The Ruffians, a new music collective and upper voice vocal trio, specialising in improvisation and unaccompanied music by composers of marginalised identities. The ensemble was highly commended at the 2023 Gladys Puttick Improvisation Competition, and performed at Nozstock Festival in July 2024.
A keen baroque specialist, Miranda’s recent solo engagements include the annual sell-out Messiah at Smith Square Hall with Platinum Consort and Platinum 415 under Scott Inglis-Kidger; Bach’s Weihnachts-Oratorium with the German Choir of London; and Bach’s St John Passion and numerous cantatas with the Oxford Bach Soloists and Tom Hammond-Davies, with whom she was an inaugural choral scholar (2018–19). She has also performed Victoria Requiem (1605) with Platinum Consort at St James’s Piccadilly, Handel Dixit Dominus, a one-voice-per-part Bach St Matthew Passion, and Monteverdi Vespers at Portsmouth Cathedral. Miranda regularly deputises at London churches including St Stephen’s Gloucester Road, St Bride’s Fleet Street, and St George’s Cathedral, Southwark.
Miranda graduated with a BA (Hons) in Music from University College, Durham in 2015, where she was a choral scholar.
Miranda also works as a freelance graphic designer.