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The Canadian soprano and conductor, Christine R. Howlett, was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, but grew up around Toronto, Ontario. She studied as an undergraduate at the University of Toronto (Bachelor of Music Performance, Voice Performance: 1990-1994), and earned both a Master of Music degree in Early Music Voice Performance (1996-2000) and a D.M.A. in Choral Conducting (1996-2003) from Indiana University in Bloomington. She has studied voice and conducting with Alan Bennett, Jan Harrington, Mary Ann Hart, Paul Hillier, Drew Minter, Helmuth Rilling, Stanley Ritchie, John Poole and Carmen Tellez.
Since 2003, Christine Howlett is the Director of Choral Activities at Vassar College where she conducts the Vassar College Women's Chorus, Vassar College Choir and teaches music theory and voice. Her choruses have sung at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall, and have toured in Italy, Turkey, Germany, Spain and in the USA. Recently, the Vassar College Women's Chorus performed at both the National Collegiate Choral Association at Yale University in November, 2009 and at the American Directors Association Eastern Conference in Philadelphia in February 2010. She is the Artistic Director of Cappella Festiva (since 2006), an auditioned choral ensemble with a thirty-five year history of performing in the Hudson Valley. In 2006, she co-founded the Summer Choral Festival at Vassar College and the Cappella Festiva Treble Choir, an auditioned choral ensemble for treble voices ages 10-16. She is also Music Director of Danbury Concert Chorus (since 2011).
Christine Howlett is active as a soprano soloist and has performed in many works including J.S. Bach's Magnificat (BWV 243), Mass in B minor (BWV 232), St. Matthew's Passion (BWV 244), Actus Tragicus (BWV 106), Charpentier's Les Arts Florissants, W.A. Mozart's Coronation Mass, Benjamin Britten's Ceremony of Carols, Mass by Igor Stravinsky, and most recently, Francis Poulenc's Gloria. She has sung in ensembles, both as soloist and choral member, under Simon Carrington, Paul Hillier, Lorin Maazel, and Helmuth Rilling. She is a member of Kairos: A Consort of Singers, an ensemble of sixteen voices whose members are artists-in-residence at the Holy Cross Monastery in West Park, New York. She currently lives in Poughkeepsie, New York. |
