Gabrielle Haigh, soprano

B i o g r a p h y

Praised for her “hauntingly beautiful soprano voice” and her “radiant and touching” delivery (Fanfare Magazine), Gabrielle Haigh, soprano, enjoys a multifaceted career in art song, vocal chamber music, opera, and concert work. Her background in chamber music, in particular, has given her a passion for the collaborative process. Ms. Haigh’s extra-musical interests include the study of languages, classical history and philosophy, and lyric poetry. She holds degrees from the University of Cambridge, where she read Classics and served as a soloist and choral scholar in the renowned Choir of Clare College, and from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

Gabrielle Haigh has appeared as a soloist with conductors including Nicholas McGegan (Philharmonia Baroque), Martin West (San Francisco Ballet), Christopher Wilkins (Akron Symphony Orchestra), Lars-Ulrik Mortensen (European Union Baroque Orchestra), Gerhardt Zimmermann (Canton Symphony Orchestra), as well as with Stephen Cleobury, Steve Gathman, Olaf Storbeck, Oliver Weder, Timothy Brown, and Graham Ross. Her solo concert repertoire has included Mozart’s Requiem, Bach’s St. John Passion and B Minor Mass, Dvorak’s Te Deum, selected songs with orchestra by Richard Strauss, the role of Benjamin in Handel’s oratorio Joseph and His Brethren, Brahms’ German Requiem, Handel’s Birthday Ode to Queen Anne, Vaughan Williams’ Hodie, and Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Ms. Haigh’s operatic roles have included Donna Anna in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Pamina in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, Rosalinde in Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus, Eurydice in Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, Lady Billows in Benjamin Britten’s Albert Herring, Diane in Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Actéon, and leading roles in Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance (Mabel) and The Grand Duke (Julia Jellicoe). She has given numerous full recitals of art songs and vocal chamber music spanning a wide range of repertoire from early Baroque to newly written works.

Under the baton of Steven Smith, in 2024 Gabrielle Haigh and the Erie Coast Cellists released a CD of music for eight cellos and soprano called Voices from the Other Side on the Navona label. “To say the pieces are hauntingly beautiful is an understatement. The richness and variety on offer here is quite staggering.” (Reviewgraveyard.com)

In 2022 Gabrielle Haigh and pianist Randall Fusco released Il Circolo Respighi on the MSR label wonderful reviews: “Rather than the yellow-gold of summer, Haigh’s soprano is the reddish gold of a sunny autumn day. Randall Fusco’s piano accompaniment is superlative.” (Fanfare Magazine) “Gabrielle Haigh… and her colleague, pianist Randall Fusco, present these pieces with sensitivity and penetrating understanding. Haigh and Fusco’s performances of Ottorino’s settings are lovely and atmospheric.” (ClevelandClassical.com)

In June 2025 under the baton of Steven Smith, Gabrielle Haigh will create the role of Mary Sadgrove in the premiere of The Higgler, a chamber opera in two acts by Margi Griebling-Haigh.

EDUCATION

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.

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. 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.

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 studying with Manny Perez.