Soprano Elisabeth Marshall has been praised for her “admirably flexible,

gilt-edged voice” of “resonance and beauty” and “radiant sheen”, particularly in

the works of Bach, Handel, Haydn, and Mozart. A 2016 finalist in The American

Prize Friedrich and Victoria Schorr Award, she was awarded their Special Citation

for “Outstanding Performance in Music before 1800”, and in 2017 won the

Third Prize in Art Song and Oratorio.

 

In 2015 Ms. Marshall made her Chicago Symphony Center debut in Handel’s

Messiah (Apollo Chorus), which she has also sung with the Cincinnati Symphony,

at Rockefeller Memorial Chapel in Chicago, and in Hailsham, England.

Ms. Marshall has performed the music of J.S. Bach extensively, including his

B minor Mass with the Chorus pro Musica of Boston, Maine Music Society,

the Choral Art Society of Maine; Mattäuspassion at the Oregon Bach Festival

under Helmuth Rilling, and numerous cantatas with the White Mountain Bach

Festival in North Conway, New Hampshire and others. She is often in demand as

the soprano soloist in Mozart’s Mass in C minor, which she has sung with several

ensembles across the Eastern United States. Other notable engagements include

Mozart's Requiem (Rochester Cathedral, England); Carmina Burana in Portland,

Maine; and Beethoven’s Choral Fantasia with the Indianapolis Symphony under

CBE Raymond Leppard.

 

On the opera stage she was praised for her “precision” and “technical skill” as the

Queen of the Night (The Magic Flute) in London with the Merry Opera Company; 

has appeared as Frasquita (Carmen) with Bay Chamber Concerts at Maine's historic Camden Opera House; Rosalinde (Die Fledermaus), and Rosabella (The Most Happy Fella) under Constantine Kitsopoulos with IU Opera Theater; Elisetta (Il matrimonio segreto) at the HMT-Leipzig; and Lauretta in Bizet’s Dr. Miracle with OperaMaine.

 

A dedicated advocate of new music, Ms. Marshall is a regular artist with the Brooklyn Art Song Society, and is featured on their 2015 debut studio album “New Voices” (Roven Records) in James Kallembach’s Four Romantic Songs, her delivery of which OPERA NEWS hailed as “radiant” and “sensuous”. In 2016 she joined the Lorelei Ensemble in the U.S. premiere of George Benjamin’s Dream of the Song at the Tanglewood Contemporary Music Festival under the baton of Stefan Asbury, and returned with them in 2017 for György Ligeti's Clocks and Clouds. In the summer of 2017 she also was a Professional Fellow at SongFest in Los Angeles, performing works of Libby Larsen and Scott Wheeler, among others.

 

Ms. Marshall performs regularly with several professional choral ensembles including the Handel & Haydn Society and the Oregon Bach Festival, and previously with the Lorelei Ensemble, Wexford Festival Opera, London Philharmonia Chorus, and Carmel Bach Festival, working with conductors such as Lars Ulrik Mortensen, Helmuth Rilling, Matthew Halls, Leonard Slatkin, Masaaki Suzuki, and Craig Hella Johnson.

 

A Fulbright grant recipient to the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Leipzig, Germany, she sang for many years with Helmuth Rilling through the Internationale Bachakademie Stuttgart, and later La Academia de Bach in Chile. Ms. Marshall holds a Doctorate in Music from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where her principal teacher was Carol Vaness, and has also coached with Roger Vignoles, Martin Katz, Håkan Hagagård, Delores Ziegler, Charles Riecker, and Suzanne Murphy.

 

Ms. Marshall has served on the voice faculty of the Ithaca College School of Music, the University of Southern Maine School of Music, and the Portland Conservatory of Music. In 2020 Ms. Marshall relocated to the Chicago area where she now lives with her husband, composer James Kallembach, maintains a private voice studio, and works as a freelance writer.