Gabrielle Haigh, soprano
B i o g r a p h y
GABRIELLE HAIGH, soprano, hails from Cleveland, Ohio and currently resides in Chicago, Illinois. Her upcoming performances include Dvorak's Te Deum and a selection of songs with orchestra by Richard Strauss with the Canton Symphony Orchestra. Her most recent engagements were as Eurydice in Monterverdi's L'Orfeo at the Miami Classical Music Festival, with the San Francisco Ballet as soprano soloist in multiple performances of Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream under the direction of Martin West, and Akron Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Christopher Wilkins in the Mozart Requiem in February 2020. Other recent appearances included the roles Pamina in Die Zauberflöte and Rosalinde in Die Fledermaus, both with Lyric Opera Studio Weimar, and Benjamin in Handel’s Joseph and His Brethren (with recording) and the Angel in Handel’s Joshua, both with Philharmonia Baroque, led by Nicolas McGegan. She was a recipient of a full tuition Colburn Foundation Fellowship to SongFest in Los Angeles in 2019, where she appeared in several public masterclasses and coached with Libby Larsen, Jake Heggie, Margo Garrett, and Mark Trawka, among others. She has been a soloist with the San Jose Symphonic Choir and Orchestra in Mozart’s Requiem, the Bach B Minor Mass, and Vaughan Williams’ Hodie. As a member of Lamplighters Theatre in San Francisco, she sang the role of Kate in The Yeoman of the Guard (with recording) and performed as a member of the company in Patience, both by Gilbert and Sullivan. But for the Covid-19 Pandemic, other engagements in 2020 were to have included Mozart's C Minor Mass with San Jose Symphonic Chorus and Dvořák’s Te Deum with the Canton Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Gerhardt Zimmermann.
Since 2006 Ms. Haigh has given numerous full recitals of art song, including several benefits as well as lecture recitals in French. She has given premiere performances of new art song repertoire in recital and on concerts presented by the Cleveland Composers Guild. She graduated in 2014 with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Classics from Clare College, Cambridge University, where she also served as a choral exhibitioner in the renowned Clare College Choir. With the choir, she toured throughout Australia, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy,
Luxembourg, and the U.S., and performed as soloist in Bach’s St. John Passion, and in Handel’s Birthday Ode to Queen Anne with the European Union Baroque Orchestra, among many other works. She has appeared as soloist in the Brahms Requiem in Kings College Chapel under Stephen Cleobury, as Mabel in Pirates of Penzance with the Cambridge Gilbert & Sullivan Society, Carlotta in Phantom of the Opera, and soprano soloist in Villa Lobos’ Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5 for the Clare College Music Society. In 2015 she sang the lead role of Diana in Charpentier’s Actéon, and in served as Assistant Director while singing the lead role of Julia Jellicoe in Gilbert & Sullivan’s last operetta, The Grand Duke, at the International Gilbert & Sullivan Festival in Harrogate, Yorkshire, a performance which garnered her “Best Female Performance” in the University Division.
Ms. Haigh completed her Master of Music degree (Voice, Opera) at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in 2018. Her teachers have included Marla Berg, Nicola-Jane Kemp, Stephen Varcoe, Barbara Rearick, and Sylvia Anderson. She is currently coaching with Mark Trawka, Director of Musical Studies and Chorus Master for the prestigious Pittsburgh Opera Resident Artist Training Program.
Hailing from a musical family, Ms. Haigh began her training in music theory, piano, and composition in early childhood with members of her musical family. She graduated in 2009 from Laurel School in Shaker Heights, Ohio, and attended Princeton University for one year before beginning her studies in Cambridge. In 2008 and 2009, she was a national finalist in voice in the MTNA competitions. In 2006, she received favorable reviews as soprano soloist with the Canton Symphony Orchestra in Marvin Hamlisch’s Anatomy of Peace and was invited back in 2007 to sing the soprano solo in Richard Wagner’s Kinder-Katechismus. For four seasons, she was a member of Apollo’s Musettes, young vocalists who perform with Apollo’s Fire, the Cleveland Baroque Orchestra. She sang for five seasons in the Cleveland Orchestra Children’s Chorus and for two seasons as a member and soloist with the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Chorus.
Also an accomplished composer, Ms. Haigh has won multiple international and national prizes from Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI), ASCAP, MTNA, and NFMC. Her orchestral tone poem Poème Rituel was premiered by the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra, James Feddeck, music director, on her eighteenth birthday in 2010, and her Symphony No. 1, composed when she was sixteen years old, was given four professional performances by the Monterey Symphony, Max Bragado Darman, music director, in 2011, in Salinas, Monterey, and Carmel-by-the-Sea.