Email: collavoc@yahoo.com
Website: www.gabriellasnyder.com
Phone: 781-321-2714
Gabriella Snyder is a mezzo soprano, voice teacher, and composer of solo vocal, choral and instrumental music. Her three-act music drama, Prince of Peace - A Passion Play, based on the passion play of award-winning poet, Catherine de Vinck, was premiered in 2003 at St. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral in Boston. This recorded performance featured organ, five vocal soloists, and a chorus composed of members of the Saengerfest Men's Chorus and Concord Madrigals. Her latest music drama, The Rough-Face Girl: An Algonquin Cinderella, is a one-act opera for six female singers, percussion, keyboard and flute, and was premiered by Mass Theatrica in the Boston area in October 2009.
Snyder has also written piano etudes, Duo for Violin and Cello, instrumental, choral and solo vocal pieces. Her Christmas choral anthem, Stars of Glory is published by GIA Publications and has been performed and recorded by the Polymnia Choral Society in Melrose, MA. A second Christmas choral anthem, Come With Me, has been performed and recorded by the Bloomington High School North chorus of Bloomington, IN. Her song cycle, Ordinary Miracles - Poetry of Recovery, was performed for the dedication concert in July 1995 at the reopening of the Pont-Aven School of Art in Pont-Aven, Brittany, France, an artists' colony first begun by the Impressionist painter, Paul Gauguin. Her choral setting of Psalm 150 was premiered in June 1999 in a tribute at Immaculate Conception Parish observing the 350th year of the founding of Malden, MA. This same choir also premiered Snyder’s anthem We Bring You Glad Tidings.
An advocate of new music, Snyder was the understudy for Metropolitan Opera soprano, Louise Wohlafka, in the world premier of Dan Locklair's opera, Good Tidings from the Holy Beast. She performed in the premier of the improvisational music drama, Between the Lines, at the Boston Public Library, Copley Square, for the Boston-based New Opera Theater Ensemble (N.O.T.E.).
Her work in opera and oratorio includes roles with the Newton Opera Workshop: Zerlina in Don Giovanni, Musetta in La BohPme, and Cherubino in The Marriage of Figaro. She sang the role of The Abbess in Puccini's Suor Angelica with MassTheatrica. She sang the role of Mrs. Gleaton in Susannah with Lowell House Opera, and the role of Lucy in Menotti's The Telephone at Cabot House, both at Harvard University. She appeared as Rose Maybud in a production of Ruddigore by the Binghamton Summer Savoyards, and sang the leading role in Donizetti's Rita with the Lyric Opera of the Twin Tiers, New York. As a concert soloist, she has worked with, among others, the Woods Hole Cantata Consort, the Falmouth Interfaith Chorus, the Stow Community Chorus, and the Harpur Chorale of Binghamton University, NY. She served as Choir Director and soloist at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Malden, MA, as soprano soloist at the First Baptist Church of Malden, MA, and as substitute soloist in many churches of various denominations.
In addition to her classical training, Ms. Snyder has a longtime interest in traditional music with its raw power and harmonies. The songs she has written in the folk idiom reflect this penchant. Some, like Oh What a Day, echo the sounds of the Southern uplands; others, like God's Hand to You
have a distinct Celtic flavor. Her Christmas carol Come With Me rings with the sounds of the Renaissance. She was the principal singer and mountain dulcimer player from 1989 to 1993 with The Sacred Harp Ensemble -- a group she founded to perform traditional American sacred music. She played from 1993 to 1997 in the acoustic duo Snyder & Rasmussen which produced a recording of Celtic, traditional and original songs called Keeper of Memories. Her CD Ancient Christmas -
Songs & Carols showcases many rarely heard carols from the Appalachian mountains, the native American Huron tribe, the British Isles, and France -- from Medieval times to the present.
Snyder has performed traditional music featuring mountain dulcimer at festivals and coffeehouses throughout New England, including First Night Boston, First Night Pittsfield, Full Cup Coffeehouse, Stoneham, TryWorks Coffeehouse, New Bedford, Jacob's Ladder Coffeehouse, Malden, the Malden Family Festival, the Troy Arts Festival, NH, Pilgrim Pines Conference Center, NH, as well as historical societies and libraries. She has performed live on WKNH-FM, Keene, NH and WSMU-FM, New Bedford, MA.
Ms. Snyder studied voice with Louise Wohlafka, formerly a soloist at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. She also studied voice with the late David Blair McClosky of The McClosky Institute of Voice, known as John F. Kennedy's vocal coach during the presidential campaign in 1960. She learned the Berton Coffin singing method (phonetic basis of bel canto) from Robert Gartside, a vocal soloist who studied in Paris with Pierre Bernac, the baritone who premiered works of Francis Poulenc. Mr. Gartside is a retired professor of the Voice Faculty at Boston University's School for the Arts. Ms. Snyder received her Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry and Music from Binghamton University in New York. She studied counterpoint at Harvard College, Cambridge, MA, drama at Roberson Center for the Arts, Binghamton, New York, and orchestration with faculty at Berklee College of Music in Boston. She was twice a judge for the annual music scholarship competition of the General Federation of Women's Clubs of Massachusetts. She teaches singing, ear training and theory privately. Snyder lives with her husband in Malden, MA, where she has worked for over 20 years as the Special Projects/Volunteer Coordinator with Bread of Life, a free food program for low-income and homeless people.