A bright, young, accomplished singer on the opera and concert stages, soprano Katherine Jolly has appeared in leading roles with Opera Theatre Saint Louis, Florida Grand Opera, New York City Opera, Virginia Opera, Amarillo Opera, Piedmont Opera, Lyric Opera Cleveland, American Lyric Theatre and others. Her recent CD Preach Sister Preach has received airtime on radio stations across the country and rave reviews in publications and on websites such as Gramophone, Review Graveyard, Take Effect, and others. In the concert arena, she has performed recently as the soprano soloist in Handel’s The Messiah with the Evansville Philharmonic, the Richmond Symphony, and the Phoenix Symphony. Jolly was featured with the Phoenix Symphony in staged performances of Brundibar, Knoxville: Summer of 1915, with Sinfonia Gulf Coast, Carmina Burana, with Northwest Florida Symphony, and Mozart’s Mass in C Minor, with the Sacramento Choral Arts Society. In 2012, the soprano returned to the Sacramento Choral Arts Society, in the Fauré Requiem and Vivaldi’s Gloria. “Jolly’s voice enraptured the audience, as she sang the ethereal Domine Deus”, Sacramento Press.
Katherine made her debut with Houston Grand Opera in 2012, performing as part of their East/West Chamber Opera series, in a premier of New Arrivals. “Katherine Jolly, also making her HGO debut, employed tender and expressive soprano vocals to make her portrayal of Iris poignant and unforgettable”, Operaworld.com. She debuted with Virginia Opera, reprising Yum-Yum, in The Mikado, and was featured with the company as one of three sopranos in their Simply Sopranos Gala. The soprano returned to New York City Opera in 2010 for performances as Laoula in L’Etoile following her performances in Cendrillon, in 2007, where Variety wrote of her debut, “As the Fairy Godmother, coloratura soprano Katherine Jolly, delights with her endlessly flowing trills, runs and roulades.”
A winner of the 2006 Metropolitan Opera National Council Grand Finals, the New York Times wrote “Katherine Jolly used her agile, bright lyric soprano to superb effect in showpieces from Mozart’s Entführung aus dem Serail and Ariadne auf Naxos. Ms. Jolly returned to the Met in the spring of 2010 to workshop An Enchanted Island with the company, and was featured with City Opera’s VOX series for new operas, in Acquanetta, and Josephine, broadcast on NPR. In addition to her Metropolitan Opera National Council Award, she has been the recipient of other awards from organizations including the George London Foundation, Opera Theatre Saint Louis, the McAllister Foundation, and the National Association of Teachers of Singing.
Jolly has presented workshops of co-authored research on yoga, singing, and performance anxiety at the Performing Arts Medical Association, Voice Foundation, National Association of Teachers of Singing, and the National Percussion Conference, among others. The soprano is a certified yoga instructor, with 18 years of training in classical ballet, additional studies in modern and African dance, as well as mindfulness training. She received the Doctorate of Musical Arts and Master of Music degrees from the University of Cincinnati, College-Conservatory of Music. As an Assistant Professor of Music at Saint Louis University, Department of Fine and Performing Arts, Dr. Jolly was recently awarded a Mellon Faculty Career Grant, and was a 2016-2017 Finalist for the Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award in the College of Arts and Sciences. She was the recipient of a New Frontiers Grant for Creative Activity, from Indiana University, where she served as an Assistant Professor of Voice from 2017-2019. Katherine’s primary teachers were Barbara Honn, Thomas Baresel, and Phyllis Hoffman. More information can be found at: katherinejollysoprano.com and bergerartists.com. Dr. Jolly is currently an Associate Professor of Voice at Oberlin Conservatory.