Kathleen Roland – Soprano
Kathleen Roland is a well-regarded soloist in the realms of both opera and orchestral music. A featured singer with many music festivals, including the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, the Britten-Pears Institute and the Tanglewood Music Festival, she has performed with many notable conductors, including James Conlon (with whom she made her recent Disney Hall debut), Kent Nagano, Reinbert de Leeuw, John Mauceri (in her recent Hollywood Bowl debut) and Oliver Knussen. Ms. Roland has been a frequent featured soloist with the Grammy award-winning Southwest Chamber Music Society of Los Angeles, and with Long Beach Opera and Pacific Serenades Chamber Music. Recent performances include concerts of the music of Hugo Wolf and Kurt Weill with the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, the role of Wellgunde in Die Walküre with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, Pacific Serenades at the Los Angeles Getty Museum, performances with the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, and the premiere in Los Angeles of Kurt Weill's The Eternal Road with the Los Angeles Jewish Symphony. She has appeared as soloist with the Los Angeles County Museum Sundays at Four, as well as on the Los Angeles Philharmonic Green Umbrella concert series. ~ Since making her professional debut with San Francisco Opera as the Countess Ceprano in Rigoletto, she has gone on to sing the roles of Rosalinda in Die Fledermaus and Giulietta in Tales of Hoffmann. She performs concerts regularly under the auspices of Los Angeles Opera, featuring the roles of Abigaille, Aida, Desdemona, Marguerite (La damnation de Faust), the Dyer's Wife, Ariadne, and Vanessa. ~ Ms Roland was awarded an American-Scandinavian Foundation grant in 2001, enabling a stay in Stockholm as a guest artist and teacher at the Stockholm Royal College of Music, performing concerts of both American and Swedish contemporary music. She was awarded a highly prestigious Fulbright Scholarship to Sweden in 2007 to continue work on an anthology of Swedish song for English speakers. Ms. Roland can be heard on the fmusici/Oxford University Press recording of American composer Libby Larsen's music, Licorice Stick, recorded with the composer in Stockholm, and is also featured on the recording Aura, recently released this year with Southwest Chamber Music. She was chosen by eminent American composer Thomas Pasatieri to sing the premiere of his new song cycle, A Rustling of Angels, with the West Hollywood Orchestra. International appearances include a recent tour with Southwest Chamber Music in Southeast Asia, featuring the music of Grawemeyer award winning composer Chinary Ung, and at the Tonhalle in Dusseldorf with conductor Robert Platz and mdi ensemble milano. ~ Future engagements include appearances with the contemporary ensemble, inAuthentica and singing the Verdi Requiem at Disney Hall in August. ~ Ms. Roland holds a Doctorate of Musical Arts in vocal performance from the University of Southern California, and is currently a member of the music faculty at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California. She is a member of NATS and serves on the board for the National Opera Association.