Australian-born, freelance mezzo-soprano, Lynette Alcántara leads a busy life as a singer, vocal consultant, conductor and choral animateur. Between 1993-2017 she was a staff alto with The BBC Singers.
After a long career as a professional singer, she now focusses on singing teaching and conducting choirs in Cambridge, UK. She has appeared as soloist in opera, oratorio, recital and on disc, singing for many of the leading ensembles in Britain including The BBC Singers, The Monteverdi Choir, The Sixteen, English National Opera, Opera North, the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, The Bach Choir and The King’s Consort. She has appeared regularly for BBC radio and TV, and at the Royal Albert Hall and on the South Bank. She was delighted to be a soloist in the world premiere of Piers Maxim’s The Masked Ball, and sang the role of Ursula in Tim Watt’s opera Kepler’s Trial at the V&A Museum in 2017. Recent solo work includes Verdi Requiem in Southwark Cathedral and Dvorák Mass in D & Vivaldi Gloria in Ely Cathedral.
Lynette has a thriving singing teaching practice in Cambridge and is a Fellow and Director of Music at Wolfson College, Cambridge. She is the founding conductor of KJV Community Children’s Choir, and was for twelve years the singing teacher for the choristers of the Choir of King’s College. She currently teaches singing to the Choral Scholars at Queens’ College and Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. In autumn 2024 she began teaching singing on the new Cambridge Foundation Choral Scheme which aims to increase access to choral singing. Private pupils’ successes include a BBC Radio 2 Young Girl Chorister of the Year and numerous pupils going on to post-graduate singing courses around the world, including RAM, RCM, RNCM and Manhattan School of Music, and gaining Choral Scholarships at Oxbridge and places in the National Youth Choir. She regularly adjudicates for school music competitions (Bedford School, Eton), and the Clare College Song Competition in 2023 & 2025.
She lectured on Vocal health and pedagogy to Choral Conductors on the MMus in Choral Studies at the University of Cambridge for many years, and between 2018 until COVID was the Co-ordinator and Vocal Pathway Leader of the expanded MMus. She has been a guest Chorus Master for the Cambridge Philharmonic Chorus and Saffron Walden Choral Society and was Vocal Coach for the Cambridge University Symphonic Chorus for many years. Between 2022-24 she was Director of the Song School at OLEM (Our Lady of the English Martyrs Catholic Church).
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