Linda Hirst has been played on NTS over 20 times, featured on 17 episodes and was first played on 13 May 2014.

Linda Hirst was born and grew up in Huddersfield, and studied flute and singing at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Her career began during the early music revival of the early seventies, with Roger Norrington, John Eliot Gardiner and David Munrow. From 1974-78 she was a Swingle Singer, she then co-founded Electric Phoenix. With both groups she travelled the world, leading to work with many living composers, and becoming internationally renowned, in particular for her performances of contemporary music.

She has performed with many of the world’s leading orchestras, conductors and chamber ensembles in festivals, broadcasts and recordings. Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire has been a constant thread through the last 25 years, and she has just completed a series for the Royal Ballet at the Royal Opera House.

Recent concerts have taken her to the Buenos Aires Festival of Contemporary Music to sing Berio and Scelsi, and to Taipei for performances of Benedict Mason’s Chaplin Operas with the Ensemble Modern. This season she will sing Lachenmann in Cologne and Huddersfield with ensemble recherche.