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Welcome to the website of soprano

KATHARINE DAIN

Thank you for visiting! Using the links above, you can find my performance calendar, résumé, sound samples, photographs, and more, or you can read more about me below.

NEWS

November 1, 2009

Katharine will be singing Anne Trulove in Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress (Act 1) with the Mannes Opera and Orchestra, conducted by Joseph Colaneri, on January 8-9 at the Bank Street Theater. She will also be singing excerpts from Strauss Der Rosenkavalier (Sophie) and Ariadne auf Naxos (Zerbinetta), Handel Partenope (title role), and Donizetti L’Elisir d’Amore (Adina) with piano in the Mannes Concert Hall on April 6.

September 3, 2009

Katharine has just returned to New York after a busy summer 2009, including performances at the Staunton and Mt. Gretna festivals and a residency as a Steans Institute Young Artist at the prestigious Ravinia Festival near Chicago, where she sang in masterclasses with Matthias Goerne and Christoph Eschenbach and coached with Malcolm Martineau, Roger Vignoles, and Brian Zeger, among others. Performances from Ravinia are available for streaming on InstantEncore; listen at the links below.
Britten: On This Island
Harbison: Simple Daylight

She is now preparing for the upcoming season, which includes recitals at Bargemusic and the White Mountain Music Festival, several Messiahs, her first Carmina Burana (with the Alexandria Symphony Orchestra), and various other projects.

BIOGRAPHY

Soprano Katharine Dain has been praised by the New York Times for her “rich tone,” “deep emotion,” and “lovely, passionate” stage presence. Of a recent performance of Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, senior critic Allan Kozinn said “the ensemble’s engaging soprano gave as graceful, and as intense, a performance of Schoenberg’s stylized vocal line as you could want.” Originally from North Carolina, she has a natural affinity for the operas and oratorios of Handel, Bach, Purcell, and Mozart, but her diverse repertoire spans six centuries, encompassing music of Monteverdi, Schütz, Haydn, Brahms, Verdi, Wolf, Debussy, Berg, Strauss, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Barber, Weill, Berio, and numerous contemporary composers. On the operatic stage, her roles include Fiordiligi (Così fan tutte, Harvard University), Calisto (La Calisto, Amherst Early Music Festival), Second Woman/Second Witch (Dido and Aeneas, Mark Morris Dance Group), Acis (Acis and Galatea, Mannes College), and several premieres of roles in contemporary operas. In the summer of 2009 she performed as a Steans Institute Young Artist at the Ravinia Festival.

While an undergraduate at Harvard University, Ms. Dain earned a B.A., cum laude, while pursuing various interests: choral singing, conducting, composition, classical radio, opera, and co-founding and singing with the acclaimed Cambridge Early Music Project. At graduation she was awarded the prestigious John Knowles Paine Fellowship from the Harvard Music Department which allowed her to enroll in a master’s program in Early Music at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. There she studied voice with Margaret Humphrey Clark and historical performance practice with some of the top names in British early music, including Emma Kirkby, Nancy Argenta, Rachel Podger, Stephen Preston, Andrew Carwood, and Peter Phillips. She worked frequently as an oratorio soloist and free-lance ensemble singer, including engagements with the Parley of Instruments, Brighton Early Music Festival, and the choirs of St. Bartholomew-the-Great and St. Sepulchre-without-Newgate, with whom she appeared on the BBC. Ms. Dain also developed a relationship with acclaimed recitalist and new-music specialist Sarah Walker CBE, presenting 20th- and 21st-century recital repertoire as part of the Creative Voices contemporary music program.

Ms. Dain then moved to New York City to study at Mannes College of Music with Ruth Falcon and Amy Burton. She has been a featured performer on many Mannes concerts, including the 2008 Beethoven Festival concert in Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall, and has also developed an active performance career in the city as soloist with ensembles such as the Collegiate Chorale, Mark Morris Dance Group, New York City Ballet, New York Virtuoso Singers, the Choir of Trinity Wall Street, the Rebel Baroque Orchestra, and the New England Baroque Soloists, in venues including Carnegie Hall (Weill Hall and Zankel Hall), Lincoln Center (New York State Theater and Bruno Walter Auditorium), the Stone, the Austrian Cultural Forum, the French Consulate, St. Paul’s Chapel, and St. John the Divine. She is increasingly in demand as an interpreter of the contemporary repertoire and has premiered pieces by composers including Stockhausen and Gervasoni under the auspices of the Joy in Singing Foundation, the Talea Ensemble, and the New York Miniaturist Ensemble. She has co-founded two ensembles that perform frequently in the city: Lunatics at Large, a contemporary chamber group called “young, energetic, and highly polished” by senior Times critic Allan Kozinn, and Callisto Ascending, a period-instrument group that has performed at the Boston Early Music Festival, the Gotham Early Music Scene Showcase and Midtown Concert Series in New York.

A recipient of Mannes’s Marcus Wahl Award for excellence in performance, the Bev Sellers Memorial Scholarship, and winner of the Guildhall Baroque Orchestra Concerto Competition, Ms. Dain has worked in masterclasses with Matthias Goerne, Christoph Eschenbach, Dawn Upshaw (Marilyn Horne Foundation masterclasses 2008), Graham Johnson, Martin Katz, Jake Heggie, John Harbison, John Musto, Craig Smith, Wolfgang Holzmair, Wolfram Rieger, Meribeth Bunch, Julianne Baird, and Paul Sperry.