Susan Bender
Assistant Professor of Voice
Education:
- 1983: Bachelor of Music in Education, University of Iowa, Iowa City
- 1990: Master of Music, Performance, University of Maryland, College Park
Courses Taught:
- Diction for Singers (Ecclesiastical Latin, Italian, English, French and German)
- Vocal Techniques for the Instrumental Music Major
- Song Literature
- Applied Studio Voice
- Director, Chamber Singers
Biography:
Susan Bender, a versatile soprano and teacher, was a Metropolitan Opera National Council Winner in 1986, the same year she debuted with the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra in a concert of operatic arias. From 1985-1989, Ms. Bender was recruited as a member of the United States Navy Band Sea Chanters in Washington, D.C. and toured with their premier wind ensemble as their soloist on three national tours in addition to appearances for international dignitaries. She has appeared as a featured soloist with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Washington Opera (Washington National Opera), the Graz, Austria Festival Orchestra, Fairbanks Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, on an international tour to Southeast Asia with the United States Information Service, the Garth Newel Chamber Players in Italy, the Washington Bach Consort, the Iowa Bach Festival, Stony Brook Bach Festival (as an apprentice to soprano Beverly Hoch), the 20th Century Consort at the Smithsonian, Signature Theater and with Interact Theater for several summers performing the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan. Her work on the musical theater stage earned two Helen Hayes nominations from the Washington Theater Awards Association (for Mabel in Pirates of Penzance and for Johanna in Sondheim's Sweeney Todd). Other roles include Norina, Don Pasquale; Susanna, the Marriage of Figaro; Poussette, Manon; Diane, Hippolyte et Aricie; Damigella, L'incoronazione di Poppea.
Ms. Bender's concert and oratorio work consistently receives high marks; performed repertoire includes the works of Hildegard von Bingen, Vivaldi, Bach, Handel, Mozart and Haydn, Schubert and premieres of numerous contemporary chamber works. The Washington Post called her performance of Olivier Messiaen's Pomes pour Mi "nothing short of breathtaking" and the New York Times proclaimed her as possessing "charming, lyric coloratura."
As a teacher of voice, Professor Bender's students have won many Maryland and Wisconsin state and Mid-Atlantic regional NATS awards and have gone on to study and work at Indiana University, University of Minnesota Twin Cities, University of North Carolina Greensboro, Catholic University, the Washington Opera Chorus, and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
Ms. Bender is recorded on the Norton, Foundry and Albany labels; her most recent recording was of Glück's Orphée on Naxos with L'Opéra Lafayette, and Opera News reviewed her as "a persuasive Diana" in that company's production of Jean-Phillippe Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie. (See and hear Professor Bender accompany the Bowen McCauley Dance with Wiegenlied by Franz Schubert.)