Light, bright, agile and pure are words that leap to mind on hearing Grace Davidson. Yet beneath the gleaming surface of her crystalline sound and pinpoint technical accuracy lie rich reserves of emotional intelligence and expressive artistry. The British soprano’s vocal and intuitive armoury enable her to project the vivid contrasts of mood at the heart of her favourite Baroque repertoire with near-divine ease, especially so in the works of Monteverdi, J.S. Bach, Handel and Vivaldi. She has also forged fruitful relationships with living composers, notably as the spine-tingling soloist in Eric Whitacre’s poignant arrangement of Trent Reznor’s “Hurt”, in Howard Shore’s The Lord of the Rings Symphony, and with John Rutter, Harry Gregson Williams and Max Richter, who chose her as the solo voice for his eight-and-a-half-hour Sleep. Davidson, born in 1977, caught the singing bug during infancy and, after a short spell as a trainee chef, set the foundations for her career as a scholarship student at London’s Royal Academy of Music.