Biography

American soprano Kathryn Mueller thrills and connects with audiences with her crystalline sound, personal warmth and musicianship. She sings a wide range of repertoire from period baroque performances to world premieres of new works, and has been a soloist with the LA Chamber Orchestra, American Bach Soloists, Portland Baroque Orchestra, Santa Fe Pro Musica, Phoenix Symphony, New Mexico Symphony Orchestra, Winston-Salem Symphony, and Tucson Symphony Orchestra.

Kathryn’s favorite concert works include Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915, Glière’s Concerto for Coloratura Soprano, Haydn’s Creation, Bach’s St. John Passion, and anything by Mozart or Handel. She collaborates as a guest artist with the award-winning early music group Wayward Sisters, and has also sung operatic roles for Arizona Opera, the North Carolina HIP Music Festival, and Bach Collegium San Diego.

Kathryn received a 2015 GRAMMY nomination for her solo work on True Concord’s album Far in the Heavens. She has also recorded two GRAMMY-nominated albums with Seraphic Fire, and is featured as a soloist on recordings by New Trinity Baroque, the Santa Fe Desert Chorale, Tucson Chamber Artists, and Seraphic Fire, including Seraphic Fire’s best-selling Monteverdi Vespers of 1610, which reached the top of the iTunes classical chart.

In 2011 Kathryn was one of four fellows in the Adams Vocal Master Class at the Carmel Bach Festival. She was a finalist in the 2012 and 2013 Oratorio Society of New York's Solo Competition, winning the Frances MacEachron Award in 2013. Kathryn's soprano duo Les Sirènes was one of 6 finalist groups in Early Music America's 2012 Baroque Performance Competition.

A strong advocate for new music, Kathryn co-commissioned Reena Esmail's “The History of Red” – a concerto-length work for soprano and orchestra based on Chickasaw writer Linda Hogan’s powerful poem of the same name – along with Santa Fe Pro Musica, ROCO, Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra, and The Knights. Kathryn also gave the world premiere of Ananda Sukarlan’s song cycle Love and Variations, commissioned for her vocal-piano ensemble, the Swara Sonora Trio. The Swara Sonora Trio followed that successful premiere with a 3-week benefit tour across Indonesia, raising funds for UNICEF’s Indonesia Country Office.

Kathryn was born in San Francisco, and began her musical studies at an elevation of 7,000 feet in the White Mountains of Arizona. Her first solo performance was “Away in a Manger” in church, at age seven. She got her first pro gig – a section leader position at a church in Providence – during high school in Rhode Island, continued her vocal studies as an undergraduate at Brown University, and then earned a Masters degree in vocal performance from the University of Arizona. Kathryn lives in Raleigh, NC with her husband (NCSU choir director Nathan Leaf) and two spirited young children. She belongs to Beyond Artists, a coalition of musicians who donate a percentage of their concert fees to organizations they care about. She supports the Poor People's Campaign through her performances.