Nina Horrocks formerly performed under the stage name Ziazan. She is not currently pursuing a performing career, due to spinal injuries caused by her invisible but debilitating disability, hEDS (hypermobile-type Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome). However, if you want to discuss any performing or recording project possibilities, please get in touch through the contact form below.

 

Horrocks studied singing privately with Rae Woodland, and was guided in her research by Edward V. Foreman.

She trained at the Junior Guildhall School of Music and Drama (trumpet and piano) and the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama (historic voice) — she left the latter after a year in order to conduct her research independently.

 

She has worked as instrumentalist, singer, and actress in areas as diverse as: concerts and operas in the Royal Albert Hall, St Martin-in-the-Fields, and Snape Maltings; session work recording everything from folk to music theatre; festivals including Latitude, and Weekend at the Asylum in Lincoln, and lecture recitals in Handel & Hendrix, and the Red House.

 

Her approach and unique sound have inspired and intrigued, among others, the composers Larry Goves, Anna Meredith, Cevanne Horrocks-Hopayian, Richard Bullen, and the late Barrington Pheloung.

The rôle of Ruby in Meredith’s first opera, Tarantula in Petrol Blue, premiered at Snape Maltings, was written specifically for her unusual range, as was the rôle of the Biologist/Enchantress in Horrocks-Hopayian’s first opera, 1000 Songs, premiered at Grimeborn Festival, for which she also wrote the libretto. In the world premiere recording of Giacomo Meyerbeer’s first opera, Jephta’s Gelübde, by Naxos, she created the rôle of Tirza. She recorded more works by Horrocks-Hopayian commissioned by the London Symphony Orchestra on the album Welcome Party.

 

She has discussed the bel canto tradition on BBC Radio 4’s Great Lives in an episode on the life of Maria Callas with Harriet Harman, on BBC Radio 4’s Last Word remembering Rae Woodland, on BBC Radio 3’s In Tune with Sean Rafferty, and on LSO Soundhub on Resonance FM. She has presented her research in the first online symposium hosted by the 21st Century Music Practice Research Network, and the inaugural conference of the International Nineteenth-Century Studies Association in Durham.