Katherine Skovira

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

Bio:

Katherine Skovira, D.M.A. (she/her) is a nationally recognized curator, pedagogue, researcher, and mezzo-soprano from Philadelphia. Of her work, The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote, “The diabolical enthusiasm of Katherine Skovira… left me nearly begging for mercy...the artistic equivalent of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft.”

Her research centers on critiques of current voice systems and pedagogy, entrepreneurship, politics, and arts accessibility, with particular focus on contemporary music and its inherent means of destabilizing and reimagining power structures, and big data and voice science as means of reimagining the Fach system.

Katherine serves as Faculty Fellow in Voice at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY, and Co-Artistic Director of SoundLAB contemporary ensemble in Philadelphia. She has performed with Lorin Maazel, Sir Simon Rattle, and Barbara Hannigan, and has collaborated with the JACK Quartet, Lucerne Festival Academy, Philadelphia Orchestra, Curtis Institute, Institute on Disabilities at Temple University, American Philosophical Society, American Composers Forum, University of Pennsylvania, Barnes Foundation, and Alarm Will Sound.

Katherine is a 2024 Innovative Pedagogy Faculty Fellow at RPI and since 2022 has served as Faculty Fellow in Voice in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (HASS). She held the position of Endowed Chair of Opera, Director of Dramatic Vocal Arts, and Voice Studies Coordinator at Willamette University from 2019-2022. Katherine received the 2021 Discovery Grant for Female Composers and has been awarded additional grants from Opera America’s New Works Forum and New Music USA. She has presented at Opera America, the Voice Foundation and National Association of Teachers of Singing, as well as the International Congress of Voice Teachers, which published her recent article "The Forgotten Fach: The Sfogato in the Nineteenth Century" (2023), and at the Boulanger Initiative on “Forgotten Fach: The Sfogato and Where to Find Her” (2024). She will present at the Voice Foundation in June 2024 forthcoming work on singing and its effects on lung capacity and autonomic function.

Since 2017, Katherine has worked with innovators in the nonspeaking community, technology, medicine, and social justice in collaborative performances and education initiatives. She is responsible for numerous commissions of living composers both for herself and her students, including six world premieres for her students in 2021-22. Katherine has performed more than 30 world premieres in the past decade of chamber and operatic work.

Katherine holds degrees in voice, pedagogy, and political science from Cornell University, Westminster Choir College, and the University of Minnesota School of Music.

Voice Type: Mezzo-soprano

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

Availability: I am available as a performer; I offer lessons in a group environment; I have a wait-list for private lessons; I am available as a clinician or presenter; I accept students through a college or university program

Contact Information