LAURA OSGOOD BROWN is a performer and educator with a passion for opera, art song, oratorio, and pedagogy.  Her debut album Be Music will be released in 2023, featuring art songs and chamber music of Carrie Magin, Lauren Bernofsky, and Cynthia Van Mannen.  In recent seasons she has been a soloist with the Traverse City Opera in their programs The Voice of Woman and Lost in Translation, was the soprano soloist in Vivaldi’s Gloria with the Traverse Symphony Orchestra, Mozart’s Requiem and Serenade to Music with the Mel Larimer Concert Series, Mendelssohn's Elijah under the baton of Joseph Flummerfelt at the Interlochen Arts Festival, Newfoundland’s Opera on the Avalon as Mimì (cover) in La bohème, Finger Lakes Opera as Micaëla (cover) in Carmen, and the Benzie Area Symphony Orchestra as Tatiana in the Letter Scene from Eugene Onegin.  She has also been the soprano soloist in Handel's Messiah for performances in Traverse City, Petoskey, and Bay Harbor, MI.  Other recent performance credits at Interlochen include Villa-Lobos's Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5, Crumb's Ancient Voices of Children (excerpts), Chausson's Chanson d'amour, and Britten's A Birthday Hansel.  Dr. Osgood Brown has also given solo recitals as part of the Artists from Interlochen at Kirkbride Hall Recital Series, as a faculty member of Interlochen Center for the Arts, University of New Mexico Faculty/Guest Artist Recital Series, Interlochen Faculty Recital Series, the Wild Rose Recital Series in northern Michigan, and the St. Michael’s Concert Series in Rochester, NY.  Previous recital projects include “A Birthday Hansel for Benjamin Britten,” a multimedia recital of the composer's works in collaboration with harpist Kate Sloat in the Capital District of New York, as well as a lecture-recital exploring the song settings of the great Russian poetess Anna Akhmatova.  In her native Rochester, she has sung the roles of the soprano soloist in Britten’s War Requiem and the Female Chorus in The Rape of Lucretia, among others.

 

As a doctoral student at Eastman, she won the Concerto Competition, culminating in an orchestral performance of Britten’s Les Illuminations under the direction of Neil Varon, was awarded second place in the Jesse Kneisel Lieder Competition, judged by Dawn Upshaw, singing works by Mozart, Schubert, Brahms, and Wolf, and was also a finalist in the Friends of Eastman Opera Competition.  Additionally, she premiered the role of Nora in Paul Siskind's The Sailor-Boy and the Falcon with Metropolitan Opera mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe.

 

In fall 2016 Laura taught masterclasses at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama as part of an exchange program with Interlochen.  She has also appeared as a judge and masterclass clinician at the national Classical Singer Convention from 2016-2018.  She holds a DMA in voice performance and literature from the Eastman School of Music, where she studied with Carol Webber.  She received her MM in voice performance from the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, where she studied with Dr. Barbara Clark Paver, and received a BM in music education and performance with a dual focus in both voice and harp from the Crane School of Music at SUNY Potsdam, where her teachers were Dr. Jill Pearon and Dr. Jessica Suchy-Pilalis.  She has previously taught on the faculty at Crane, Ithaca College, and the University of Rochester.  She is currently based in northern Michigan with her husband, baritone Keith Brown, and her son Finley, where she serves as Director of Opera Workshop and Instructor of Voice at the Interlochen Arts Academy and the Interlochen Arts Camp.

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