Soprano Catherine Gardner has been praised for her embodied singing and dramatic range in both art song and opera. Her recent performances include an invitation from the 21st Century Consort (Washington, D.C) to sing Melinda Wagner's Four Settings, a work she performed in 2019 as part of the composers opera premiere Tell it Slant at East Carolina University. Other recent highlights include Handel's Messiah at Lakeside Baptist church, solo recital of night songs, first with pianist Lara Dodds-Eden (University of Toronto) and later with pianist Eric Stellrecht (East Carolina University), performing Canadian-Polish composer Norbert Palej’s The Poet and the War as part of Pianofest at the Burdock (Toronto), a concert version of Strauss’ Four Last Songs and an improvisational version of Shostakovich’s Ophelia’s Song with modern dancer and cellist at Gallery 345 (Toronto), and singing Villa Lobos’ Bachianas Brasileiras with the University of Toronto Cello Ensemble (led by Shauna Rolston). 

 

Catherine is equally comfortable in operatic and concert repertoire. Highlights include Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915 (St. Andrews University Orchestra), Rutter’s Magnificat, (Baltimore, Maryland) Handel’s Messiah,“Countess Almaviva” in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro (COSI, Italy and The University of Western Ontario), Strauss’ Four Last Songs (in recital, at Gallery 345 and at The Arts and Letters Club), Faure’s Requiem (Stratford, ON), Mozart’s Mass in C Minor (Stratford Summer Music), Schubert’s Mass in Bb and Mozart’s Mass in C Major (Detroit, Michigan). She has also premiered several roles including “Gertrude” (Mark Richard’s Hamlet, Stratford Summer Music), “Teresa” (Daniel Crozier’s The Reunion, Peabody Conservatory), “Ophelia” (Amy Kirsten’s Ophelia Forever, Peabody Conservatory), “Madame X” (Bill Miller’s The Rival, Orpheus Productions), and Craig Bohmler and Marion Adler’s cycle, Songs of Stone (Canadian Premiere, Stratford Symphony Orchestra).

 

She has won several awards and competitions, including two Peabody Career Grants, the George Castell Memorial Award (Peabody Conservatory), first place in St. Andrews University’s International Voice Competition, first place in the Baltimore Music Club’s Voice Competition (Professional Division), was finalist at the Christine and Louis Quilico Awards (Toronto) and the Sylvia Green Voice Competition (Peabody Conservatory) and most recently was the recipient of an Ontario Graduate Scholarship, a fellowship at the University of Toronto, the Eleanor and Gerald Copeland Graduate Fellowship and the Richard Bradshaw Award in Opera (University of Toronto).

 

As well as singing, Catherine is in demand as a voice teacher, adjudicator, masterclass technician and examiner (Conservatory Canada). She received her Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Toronto in 2017 where she studied with Wendy Nielsen. She is now on faculty at East Carolina University where she teaches studio voice, art song literature and graduate diction classes.