Baritone legally spoiled for choice

GREG DIXON catches up with baritone Jared Holt, whose career is continuing to hit the high notes.

Now here's a choice not many of us get to make. Should we pursue the high-powered path of law at a peak local practice, or should we take the scholarship to one of the world's most prestigious classical music schools and chance our voice on an international singing career?

It might sound like a dilemma contrived by some novelist's florid imagination, but these were the alternatives presented to Canterbury baritone Jared Holt two years ago.

The then-24-year-old had completed his classics and law degrees at Canterbury University and was gearing himself up for a job at KPMG Legal in Wellington. Then the letter arrived.

Would he, it inquired, be interested in three years of post-graduate performance study at the Royal College of Music in London?

Decisions, decisions ...

Well, not really, Holt reckons.

"I think there was no choice at all about it," says Holt by phone from London.

"Sometimes you feel you're on a bit of a predestined track, a bit of a wave moving along. I could have just jumped off it and gone into law straight away. But after being offered the scholarship, you sort of think, well, it's just such a wonderful opportunity I have to take it."

Holt's wave was clearly born of some enormous, undersea earthquake off the coast of New Zealand. Or was it a case of mysterious synchronicity?

A few days before leaving for Britain for the near $40,000-a-year scholarship, Holt won the 2000 Mobil Song Quest in Wellington.

This delivered not only the status of victory - the contest has helped to launch the careers of Dames Kiri Te Kanawa and Malvina Major - but also a $10,000 award and a study scholarship of up to $15,000 plus international air travel.

But even before he took the top dog's dosh bag, the quest had been good to him. After reaching the finals in 1994 at age 20, he was a runner-up in 1996 - and met the woman who would provide invaluable help in gaining that scholarship to the RCM.

"There is a singer named Sarah Walker, a very famous British mezzo-soprano, who was judging the 1996 Mobil Song Quest," he says.

"She was very complimentary and she sort of kept in touch from that point. She was interested in how I'd got on in the two years after that, and finally I decided I'd like to try [for the scholarship].

"So I sent an audition CD over along with the application and Sarah endorsed it. You've got to have a couple of referees, but she endorsed it over and above that. I think I actually mailed the application and CD to her and she took them to the college.

"I was lucky to have that contact - a very eminent woman, a well-known singer, and a very well-thought-of person at the college."

It's now 18 months since Holt stepped off a plane in smoggy London and began what he hopes will be the path to an international professional career. And that wave is still moving along.

Since early 2000, he has made his debut in the United States in the Temple Square Recital Series at Salt Lake City; he's been a finalist in Britain's National Mozart Competition; the winner of the National LASMO-Staffa Singers Award; and runner-up in the Maisie Lewis Trust Awards in London.

Holt returns to Auckland for his first performances in the city in four years for the From Carmen to Carmina series at the Aotea Centre this Friday and Saturday, a duo of concerts which will feature opera, choral and orchestra works, including Holt's performance of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana.

He's a busy chap, then, but not too busy to find time to attempt the London Marathon next month (he's also a keen squash and golf player) and - here's that mysterious synchronicity still at play - to find himself a fiancee.

She is a 24-year-old Scot called Catriona, who is also studying at the RCM.

All of which must be winning when you're singing, one supposes.

But it's the voice, rather than the yet-to-be-scheduled marriage, which is taking priority for the moment.

"It's a fantastic thing to have a medium through which you can really let go and express what you think about things.

"There's a really individualistic component in it which is harder to find in something like the law," he says with a quiet laugh.

Looks like that choice back in 2000 was bang on.

* Carmen to Carmina with the NBR New Zealand Opera and the Auckland Philharmonia, Aotea Centre, Friday and Saturday