Soprano Katharine Dain has been praised by the New York Times for her “rich tone,” “deep emotion,” and “lovely, passionate” performances. Originally from North Carolina, she has come to New York by way of London and Boston; 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, 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.

 

Katharine did her undergraduate work at Harvard University, earning a B.A. in Music cum laude while pursuing various interests: choral singing, conducting, composition, classical radio deejaying, opera, and co-founding and singing with the acclaimed Cambridge Early Music Project. Supported by a John Knowles Paine Fellowship, she moved after graduation to London to study Early Music at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, in which she earned an M.M. with Merit. 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. Katharine 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.

 

Upon receiving a scholarship to Mannes College, Katharine moved to New York in the fall of 2006, where she studies with Ruth Falcon and Amy Burton. She has performed with ensembles including the Mark Morris Dance Group, New York City Ballet, New York Virtuoso Singers, the Choir of Trinity Wall Street, 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 has co-founded two ensembles that perform frequently in the city: Lunatics at Large, a contemporary chamber group (Pierrot instrumentation), and Callisto Ascending, a period-instrument group favorably reviewed by Allan Kozinn for the New York Times.