Ones to watch in 2024: Lea Shaw

After starting out as an emerging artist with Scottish Opera, Glasgow-based mezzo-soprano Lea Shaw will soon be touring Scotland, writes David Kettle

“I call myself a professional screamer, because that’s what it feels like: I go into a darkened room, I scream, and people pay me.” Mezzo-soprano Lea Shaw isn’t being entirely serious, of course. But her observation is typical of the humour and self-awareness with which she approaches her work.

She’s deeply serious, however, about her craft – which stretches across opera, composition, collaborative projects, even wellbeing. And it’s that very breadth of activities and passions that makes her one of the most exciting younger musicians in Scotland at the moment. Central to what she’s doing in early 2024, however, is her long-standing relationship with Scottish Opera: she travels Scotland in February as part of the company’s Opera Highlights tour, and sings Flora in La traviata in May and June.

Not bad for a singer who arrived in Glasgow a decade ago, aged just 17, knowing barely anyone. Shaw had grown up in Colorado, USA. “There’s some arts happening there, but not as much as there could be,” she admits. “And the situation with my home life wasn’t very stable, to say the least. So I thought: either I stay and somehow make it work, or I take a really scary leap and make a life for myself.”

Her elder sister already studying in the UK felt like a sign. And Glasgow’s Royal Conservatoire of Scotland felt, Shaw says, like a natural home. “I was auditioning aged 16, but I loved Glasgow as soon as I got off the train. Moving here was really scary, but also exciting. I had the opportunity to find my own way of life: I was in charge of my own fate.” She lives in the city permanently now: she’s just celebrated her tenth anniversary in Scotland, and met her partner here.

It was a mock audition while studying at the RCS that led to Shaw’s long relationship with Scottish Opera – intended simply as a chance for students to practice presenting themselves in front of an established company, though in Shaw’s case it led to something more serious. “In February 2021 I got a call from Scottish Opera: ‘Are you still interested in being in Scotland after you graduate, and would you maybe be interested in being one of our emerging artists?’ I said: ‘Oh my god, yes, of course.’”

The first opera Shaw had seen in Scotland was Sir Thomas Allen’s staging of Don Giovanni back in 2013. “Then in my first season as an emerging artist, I was singing Zerlina in a revival of the same production. I was pinching myself: how is this my life?”

She describes the emerging artist position as “almost an apprenticeship”, with plenty of opportunities and support from more established figures. After two seasons in that role, however, Shaw is now an associate artist. “I think they trust me enough to allow me to do my own thing more,” she explains, “and it’s like if I need support or coaching, I’ll ask for it and they’ll still offer it.”

Lea Shaw

She’s particularly looking forward to her Opera Highlights tour coming up in February, as one person among the eight-strong team heading off right across Scotland – from Tongue to Stornoway to Tobermory – in two minibuses. She did a similar but smaller-scale tour in autumn 2021. “It’s so much fun – coming from where I’m from, I’m used to road trips. And it’s such a cool way to see the country – and to perform to different audiences, of course. I try to do some sea swimming and a hike in the morning of our performance days, then chill out in the afternoon before doing the show.”

Shaw is keeping busy, however, outside of her work with Scottish Opera. “I’ve always been a keen collaborator,” she explains, “whether it be with visual artists, composers, movement artists or others.” Indeed, she’d originally wanted to study both singing and composition at the RCS, before being persuaded that the vocal course was challenging enough on its own. One current project is On Sonorous Seas, a collaboration with visual artist Mhairi Killin. “I created some of the music for it, and so did my partner: it’s been performed on Mull and Iona, as well as in Glasgow.”

Alongside her collaborations, Shaw is also developing her own wellbeing project, named The Small Magician, and drawing on the huge expertise of Scottish Opera’s education department. “It’s about getting people to engage with their voices in positive ways, because the voice has a huge role in how we perceive ourselves, and it links strongly to the brain and the nervous system, and to our emotions. It’s something that’s instrumental in me being where I am today, so I get very passionate about it.”

Opera, touring, composing, wellbeing: what compels Shaw to maintain all these different strands of work? It’s partly practical: ask any young musician and they’ll probably point to a portfolio career as a way of making ends meet. But in Shaw’s case, it’s clearly artistic too. “As musicians, we have to be able to apply our art in many different ways. I’ve always been interested in lots of different things anyway. When I was little I wanted to run away and join the circus – and no joke, I’ve found myself right in the middle of it.”

Lea Shaw sings in Scottish Opera’s Opera Highlights tour, in venues across Scotland, 11 February to 23 March, and as Flora in La traviata, in Glasgow, Inverness, Aberdeen and Edinburgh, 8 May to 15 June, see www.scottishopera.org.uk. For more on Lea Shaw, see www.leakatherineshaw.com