“The diabolical enthusiasm of Katherine Skovira…
left me nearly begging for mercy…
the artistic equivalent of NASA's New Horizons.”
— The Philadelphia Inquirer: "The future of Philadelphia music"
Recent highlights
2024 — Librettist for the other side of silence, Opera Saratoga
2024 — Innovative Pedagogy Fellow, Faculty Fellow in Voice at RPI
2021 — ?this is my Body opera
- Opera America Discovery Grant 2021
- Opera America new Works Exploration Grant 2021
- New Music USA Creator Development Grant 2021
2020-2021 — Curtis Institute Speaker Series Social Entrepreneurship; NATS Presenter “Artist as Advocate”
2019-2021 — Zeller chair of opera, Willamette University
2018 — Curator, Barnes/Stokowski Festival, PhilOrch
2016-2018 Curator, Barnes Ensemble
2017 — the shape of the world we create Documentary
2016 — Invited Soloist, SICPP
2015 — New Music Fellow, SongFest
2014 — Lucerne Festival Academy Invited Soloist
2014 — Castleton Festival with Maestro Lorin Maazel
Collaborations
ISATMA 2024 at EMPAC
?this is my Body: soundlabensemble.com
Curtis Institute Social Entrepreneurship: curtis.edu
Temple Institute on Disabilities: temple.edu/instituteondisabilities
Bio
Katherine Skovira, D.M.A. (she/her) is a nationally recognized curator, researcher, and mezzo-soprano from Philadelphia. Of her work, The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote, “The diabolical enthusiasm of Katherine Skovira… left me nearly begging for mercy...the artistic equivalent of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft.”
Her research centers on critiques of current voice systems and pedagogy, entrepreneurship, politics, and arts accessibility, with particular focus on contemporary music and its inherent means of destabilizing and reimagining power structures, and big data and voice science as means of reimagining the Fach system.
Katherine serves as Faculty Fellow in Voice at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY, and Co-Artistic Director of SoundLAB contemporary ensemble in Philadelphia. She has performed with Lorin Maazel, Sir Simon Rattle, and Barbara Hannigan, and has collaborated with the JACK Quartet, Lucerne Festival Academy, Philadelphia Orchestra, Curtis Institute, Institute on Disabilities at Temple University, American Philosophical Society, American Composers Forum, University of Pennsylvania, Barnes Foundation, and Alarm Will Sound.
Katherine is a 2024 Innovative Pedagogy Fellow at RPI and since 2022 has served as Faculty Fellow in Voice in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. She held the position of Endowed Chair of Opera, Director of Dramatic Vocal Arts, and Voice Studies Coordinator at Willamette University from 2019-2022. Katherine received the 2021 Discovery Grant for Female Composers and has been awarded additional grants from Opera America’s New Works Forum and New Music USA. She has presented at Opera America, the Voice Foundation and National Association of Teachers of Singing, as well as the International Congress of Voice Teachers, which published her recent article "The Forgotten Fach: The Sfogato in the Nineteenth Century" (2023), and at the Boulanger Initiative on “Forgotten Fach: The Sfogato and Where to Find Her” (2024). She will present at the Voice Foundation in June 2024 forthcoming work on singing and its effects on lung capacity and autonomic function.
Since 2017, Katherine has worked with innovators in the nonspeaking community, technology, medicine, and social justice in collaborative performances and education initiatives. She is responsible for numerous commissions of living composers both for herself and her students, including six world premieres for her students in 2021-22. Katherine has performed more than 30 world premieres in the past decade of chamber and operatic work.
Katherine holds degrees in voice, pedagogy, and political science from Cornell University, Westminster Choir College, and the University of Minnesota School of Music.
SoundLAB
SoundLAB is a force for advocacy, education and creativity. Upcoming projects include two 2021 premieres of the new opera ?this is my Body and chamber ensemble work the other side of silence with ensemble, cutting-edge AI and AAC assistive technology, in co-determined projects with members of the non-speaking community.
Katherine co-directs SoundLAB with Music Director Robert Whalen. The Philadelphia Inquirer says of the pair: “The diabolical enthusiasm of Katherine Skovira and Robert Whalen left me nearly begging for mercy...the artistic equivalent of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft.” The pair met at Cornell University and have collaborated on multiple projects since the early 2000s, most recently in Philadelphia to launch the Barnes Ensemble in 2017 and SoundLAB in 2018.
?this is my Body
The opera ?this is my Body has received grants from Opera America Discovery Grant and New Works Exploration Grant and New Music USA Creator Developer Award. Read more via the OA 2021 press release.
Robert Whalen and Katherine Skovira have collaborated on multiple projects since the early 2000s, most recently in Philadelphia to launch the Barnes Ensemble in 2017 and SoundLAB in 2018, with the Curtis Institute and Temple Institute on Disabilities in co-determined projects with Philadelphia communities, and ?this is my Body since 2020 with Nicole Paris and Robert Whalen. The Philadelphia Inquirer says of the pair: “The diabolical enthusiasm of Katherine Skovira and Robert Whalen left me nearly begging for mercy...the artistic equivalent of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft.”
Long bio
Katherine Skovira has performed with many of the world’s leading artists, orchestras and festivals, under the artistic direction of Sir Simon Rattle, Maestro Lorin Maazel, and Barbara Hannigan and with the Lucerne Festival Academy, Bard Music Festival, and Aspen Music Festival.
Katherine is an Innovative Pedagogy Fellow at RPI and received the 2021 Discovery Grant for Female Composers and additional grants from Opera America’s New Works Forum and New Music USA. She has presented at Opera America, the Voice Foundation and National Association of Teachers of Singing, as well as the International Congress of Voice Teachers, which published her recent article "The Forgotten Fach: The Sfogato in the Nineteenth Century." She will present at the Voice Foundation in June 2024 forthcoming work on singing and its effects on lung capacity and autonomic function.
She has worked with Augusta Read Thomas, John Harbison, Bernard Rands, Vinko Globokar, and Pauline Oliveros. Her most recent repertoire includes the works of Augusta Read Thomas, Kate Soper, Georges Aperghis, and Gérard Grisey.
Katherine has sung various world, US and regional premieres with the Lucerne Festival Academy, Bard Music Festival, Aspen Music Festival, Castleton Festival, Ultima Contemporary Music Festival, Mizzou International Composers Festival, New England Conservatory's Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice, and the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival. Her collaborations include SoundLAB, the Barnes Ensemble, Alarm Will Sound, Ensemble 61, Hub New Music, Les espaces acoustiques and the musicians of the Callithumpian Consort at SICPP.
Since 2019, Katherine has served as Artistic Director of SoundLAB in Philadelphia. From 2019-2022, she served as Endowed Chair of Opera Studies, Director of Dramatic Vocal Arts, and Coordinator of the Voice Area in the Department of Music at Willamette University, in Salem, Oregon.
Katherine holds degrees from Cornell University, Westminster Choir College and the University of Minnesota. At Cornell, she was the recipient of the Barbara Troxell Vocal Music Award.
Katherine has performed the roles of Desdemona, Donna Elvira, Cherubino, Idamante, Second Lady, Flora, Cathleen in Vaughan Williams’ Riders to the Sea, Parasha in Stravinsky’s Mavra, Singer 1 in Cage’s Europera no. 5, Jordan in John Harbison’s The Great Gatsby, and Mrs. Hopkins in a workshop performance of Robert Aldridge & Herschel Garfein’s Sister Carrie. She has worked with Maestro Lorin Maazel, Sir Simon Rattle, and Barbara Hannigan in concert as invited soloist.
In the 2015-2016 season, Katherine was awarded the position of New Music Fellow at SongFest, a fellowship position awarded to a singer “showing outstanding potential in the field of new music.” There, she performed Rands’ Memo 7 and Whalen’s Meditations, as well as selections from Messiaen’s Hawari, Libby Larsen’s Love after 1950 and John Musto’s Shadow of the Blues, in addition to works by Klein, Mozart, Obradors, Rachmaninoff, Schubert, Schumann and Strauss. She performed as soloist with New England Conservatory's Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice on She concluded her summer with a recital series in NYC, PA and NJ of works by Schubert, Schoenberg, and Babbitt, and Peter Lieberson’s Neruda Songs.
In the summer of 2014 at the Castleton Festival, she prepared the role of Julia in Maazel’s groundbreaking opera 1984 in its first appearance in the United States and performed Corigliano’s Three Irish Folksong Settings for Sir James Galway. In August 2014, she sang as mezzo soloist under Sir Simon Rattle in Berio’s Coro at the Lucerne Festival and began her work with mentor Barbara Hannigan in masterclass and concert series, in which she performed selections from Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito, Hindemith’s Des Todes Tod and Schoenberg’s Op. 2 with Huw Watkins. This led Katherine to be invited as soloist with the Norwegian Radio Orchestra in September 2014.
Katherine has performed as soloist in Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen and Das Lied von der Erde, Hindemith’s Des Todes Tod, the American premiere of John Ireland’s Psalm 42 in 2012, Mendelssohn’s Der Himmel hoch and Cantata no. 42 with Augsberg College, and Frank Ticheli’s Angels in the Architecture with the 2011 MMEA Conference, in addition to extensive contemporary repertoire, including the Midwest premiere of Gérard Grisey’s Quatre chants pour frontier le seuil, the Lucerne premiere of Hindemith’s Des Todes Tod, Cage’s Songbooks, Feldman’s I met Heine on the rue Fürstenberg, Bernard Rands’ Memo 7, Augusta Read Thomas’s Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour and Twilight Butterfly, and the world premieres of Zvonimir Nagy’s Cantus Jubilus and Kirsten Broberg’s Collecting Winter at Studio Z.
For more information, contact Katherine using the form below.