Katherine Skovira

Style: Opera; Jazz; Folk; Rock; Classical; World; Pop; Musical Theatre

Bio:

Mezzo-soprano Katherine Skovira, D.M.A., is a nationally recognized artist-advocate from Philadelphia. Katherine’s work centers on intersections of artistic expression and advocacy. She is on the voice faculty of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and is on the Planning Committee for the The International Symposium on Assistive Technology for Music and Art (ISATMA) 2024 at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) in Troy, NY.

Katherine Skovira is a 2021 Opera America Discovery Grantee and serves as Artistic Director of SoundLAB contemporary ensemble and Endowed Zeller Chair of Opera at Willamette University. She has performed with Lorin Maazel, Sir Simon Rattle, Leon Botstein, David Robertson, and Barbara Hannigan, at the Lucerne Festival Academy, Bard and Aspen Music Festivals and collaborated with numerous partners including the Lucerne Festival Academy, Philadelphia Orchestra, American Philosophical Society and the American Composers Forum. Dr. Skovira holds degrees in voice, vocal pedagogy and political science from Cornell University, Westminster Choir College, and the University of Minnesota.

Katherine Skovira focuses her performance and advocacy work on contemporary music, inclusion, and social justice issues. Since 2019, Dr. Skovira has worked with members of the nonspeaking community and innovators in technology and social justice to create co-determined collaborative performance projects and education initiatives to create artistic response and community awareness of systemic areas of inequity in musical practice and performance. She is personally responsible for numerous commissions of living composers both for herself and her students and has performed more than 30 premieres in the past decade of new vocal and operatic work.

Opera America awarded Katherine Skovira a 2021 Discovery Grant for her co-creation of ?this is my Body, a new opera planned for 2022-23. Katherine has received additional grants from Opera America’s New Works Forum and New Music USA in 2021.

“The diabolical enthusiasm of Katherine Skovira ... left me nearly begging for mercy...the artistic equivalent of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft.” — The Philadelphia Inquirer: "The future of Philadelphia music", David Patrick Stearns

Voice Type: Mezzo-soprano

Music Styles Taught: Opera; Jazz; Folk; Rock; Classical; World; Pop; Musical Theatre

Availability: I am available as a performer; I am currently accepting private students; I offer lessons in a group environment; I am available as a clinician or presenter; I accept students through a college or university program

Contact Information