Aimee Kearney takes first prize in 2021 Irené Sandford Award for Singers

Soprano Aimee Kearney has been announced as the winner of the 2021 Irené Sandford Award for Singers, which commemorates the much-loved singer and former Head of Vocal Studies at the RIAM. The €2,000 bursary is generously donated by her husband, Billy Reid, in addition to a number of other prizes supported by her family, friends and donors.

Aimee performed alongside fellow sopranos Laura Aherne (second place), Caroline Behan (third place), Marta Studzińska (fourth place) in a final chosen from a competitive semi-final featuring 12 impressive singers.

Aimee is a 21-year-old soprano who is in her second year of the BMus programme studying vocal performance under Virginia Kerr and Andrew Synnott. She sings both choral and solo classical music and opera and is a Lay Vicar in Christ Church Cathedral Dublin. Aimee has competed in many competitions in recent years; she was awarded ‘Most Promising Performer’ in the Irené Sandford Award for Singers, won first prize in the U19’s Navan Choral Festival Solo Voice Competition and was a finalist in the Young Opera Voice Competition in 2019. In this year’s Feis Ceoil, she was awarded first prize in the Young Cup, the German Government Cup and the Veronica Dunne Cup, and was placed second in the Plunkett Greene Cup and third in the Lieder Prize. She was also a finalist in the Gervase Elwes Memorial Cup.

Other awards during the competition included:

Best Performance of a Polish Song during the Semi-Final Round

Marta Studzińska

The Patricia Eberhart Aria Prize

Aimee Kearney

Most Promising Performer during the Semi-Final Round

David Kennedy

Best Performance of an Art Song sung in English during the Semi-Final Round

Abbey McGiff

View the semi-final and final of the competition below.

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