Veteran of national opera stage headlines first Guest Artist Recital of 2019

(clockwise, from left) Katherine Jolly, Emily Yap Chua, and Andrew Gabbert

Katherine Jolly, a winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Grand Finals and music professor at Indiana University, will perform alongside pianist and Randolph music professor Emily Yap Chua and cellist Andrew Gabbert in the next Guest Artist/Faculty Recital on Saturday, Jan. 19. The concert will begin at 3 p.m. in Wimberly Recital Hall and is free and open to the public.

The program will include selections from Andre Previn’s Four Songs, Evan Williams’s Emily’s House, and Evan Mack’s Preach, Sister, Preach. Several of the works that will be performed in the recital are also included on a CD Jolly is recording with Chua. In addition to the main event, Jolly will work with Randolph B.F.A. colloquium and voice students during her residency. She will also give an outreach performance for youth in the Jubilee Family Development Center’s afterschool program.

Jolly has appeared in leading roles with Opera Theatre Saint Louis, Florida Grand Opera, New York City Opera, Virginia Opera, and others. In the concert arena, she has performed as the soprano soloist in Handel’s Messiah with the Evansville Philharmonic, the Richmond Symphony, and the Phoenix Symphony. She was also featured with the Phoenix Symphony in 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 addition to the Metropolitan Opera National Council Award she earned in 2006, Jolly received a 2007 George London Finalist Honorable mention and a 2005 McAllister Career Grant. More recently, she received the National Association of Teachers of Singing Award for Outstanding Teacher/Performer from SongFest in 2016. She is currently a music professor (voice) at Indiana University, and received a grant from the university’s New Frontiers in the Arts and Humanities funding program for a CD project, entitled “New Voices,” which includes works composed by Evan Mack and Evan Williams.