Puget Sound creates a rich and vibrant learning environment for students interested in vocal study, choral performance, opera, and musical theater. Students have the opportunity to perform fully-staged operas and musicals (musicals are produced in collaboration with the Department of Theatre Arts every third year) with orchestral accompaniment. Students in the four choirs study and perform literature ranging from Renaissance madrigals to contemporary work, a cappella to accompanied oratorio. Our exceptional voice faculty have performed a wide variety of concert, operatic and musical theatre repertoire at such venues as New York’s Carnegie Hall, Cleveland’s Severance Hall, Houston’s Hobby Center for the Performing Arts, the Lyrique-en-mer Festival in France, and the Bach Festival in Carmel, California, as well as with the opera companies of New York, Houston, Portland, and Seattle.
The Adelphian Concert Choir has appeared by invitation at the national conventions of both the American Choral Directors Association and the Music Educators National Conference. The Adelphians consistently impress audiences with a wide variety of demanding music performed with insight and emotion.
Graduates of the voice and choral department regularly pursue music careers as performers, educators at universities and public schools, as church and freelance musicians, or in other artistic positions. Several have pursued graduate studies at the top universities and conservatories both nationally and abroad. Professional destinations for vocalists after Puget Sound have included the Metropolitan Opera, the Houston Grand Opera, the Seattle Opera, Stuttgart Opera, and Washington (DC) Opera, national touring companies of musical theater productions, music departments as faculty at the University of Michigan, University of Nevada, and Cornish College of the Arts, and a variety of other venues as independent music teachers as well as choral directors in public schools throughout the northwest and beyond.
The University of Puget Sound creates a rich and vibrant leaning environment for students in vocal study, choral performance, opera, and musical theater. Students perform fully staged operas and musicals with orchestral accompaniment, and in the four choirs they study and perform literature ranging from Renaissance madrigals to the newest works from the 21st century, a cappella to accompanied oratorio. Our exceptional voice faculty have performed at such venues as Carnegie Hall and the Lyrique-en-mer Festival in France, as well as with the Munich Baroque Ensemble, and opera companies of New York, Portland, and Seattle.
VOICE FACULTY
Dr. Dawn Padula, Director of Vocal Studies, Mezzo-soprano
Dr. Steven Zopfi, Director of Choral Activities
- Kathryn Lehmann, Soprano
- Christina Kowalski, Soprano