Musician Presentation and Q&A: Virginia Kelsey

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC | Musician Virginia Kelsey will give a short vocal performance and teaching demonstration, followed by a Q&A, during Music Workshop.

Virginia is an original member of the Grammy© Award-winning vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth, an alternative-classical vocal band dedicated to reimagining the expressive potential of the human voice. By engaging collaboratively with artists, thinkers, and community leaders from around the world, Roomful of Teeth seeks to uplift and amplify voices old and new while creating and performing meaningful and adventurous music. Lauded by The New Yorker, NPR, and the New York Times, Roomful of Teeth has premiered innumerable compositions for voice, whose composers include Caroline Shaw, Julia Wolfe, David Lang, and Bryce Dessner. Alongside Roomful of Teeth, Virginia has been featured with the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Seattle Symphony, BBC Symphony, and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Roomful of Teeth’s eponymous debut album won the 2014 Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance, and their sophomore album, Render, was nominated in 2016 in the same category. Virginia has worked alongside celebrated opera director Peter Sellars in numerous performances of Claude Vivier’s surrealist chamber opera Kopernikus, which she has performed in several countries spanning the globe, as far-reaching as New Zealand and Germany. A lover of non-classical and post-genre music, Virginia has also appeared alongside Questlove & The Roots, Holly Herndon, tUnE-YaRds, and Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road ensemble. Virginia was featured on Silk Road’s Sing Me Home, which won the 2016 Grammy Award for Best World Music Album.

Virginia received her Bachelor of Music in Opera Performance from Manhattan School of Music, where she studied with Trish McCaffrey. She was awarded a Master’s Degree with Honors in Early Music, Oratorio, and Chamber Music from the Yale School of Music and Institute of Sacred Music at Yale University, and was the recipient of the Alumni Prize.

Music Workshop is held on Tuesdays in the Deane Carriage Barn from 6:30pm to 8:00pm. Join us to share or just to listen! A place to present, listen, perform, discuss, experience, and enjoy all aspects of music.