Andrea Folan

Biography

Andrea Folan has had a busy career, formerly as an active performer, primarily specializing in early music performance practice and lieder with fortepiano, and as a vocal pedagogue with over 30 years of teaching, much of it at the college level, over 20 of those years as an adjunct voice instructor at Nazareth University. She has performed primarily as a solo recitalist and chamber musician. She is a specialist in the performance of German Lieder, and has appeared in recitals regularly, both in the U.S. and abroad with acclaimed forte-pianists, including Malcolm Bilson, Kristian Bezuidenhout, Bart vanOort, and Tom Beghin, in festivals and on recital series, including the Boston Early Music Festival, Festival Flanders in Bruge, Belgium, festivals in the Netherlands, the Bard Festival, both on the Bard campus and in Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City, and at Jordan Hall in Boston. Andrea has recorded several CDs featuring German Lieder by Zelter, Mendelssohn, and Haydn. She can also be heard in a collection of works by Ursuline Composers of the 17th Century, and in “Medieval Woman,” a collection of works by women composers from Hildegard von Bingen through Ann Boleyn. Her recordings can be found on iTunes, Spotify, Amazon Prime Music, YouTube (CLICK to listen), or purchased at  MusicaOmina.org. 

Andrea has been on the voice faculty at Nazareth University in Rochester, NY, since 2004, previously being a voice instructor at Cornell and Syracuse Universities. At Nazareth, she teaches undergraduate and graduate Vocal Pedagogy and Diction II (French and German). As Nazareth faculty, she taught vocal workshops and lessons at the Shandong Normal University in Jinan, China.

She is also a Voice Instructor at Eastman Community Music School, where she also serves as voice faculty for their Summer Classical Studies program for high-school students.

Ms. Folan graduated with a Bachelor of Music Degree in Vocal Performance from Oberlin Conservatory, and a Bachelor of Arts Degree in German Literature from Oberlin College. She has her Master’s Degree in Vocal Performance from Syracuse University.

She has a specialization in voice science, having earned her Certificate in Vocology with Ingo Titze at the Summer Vocology Institute. Additionally, she completed all the course work, and on-campus clinical work, towards a Master’s in Speech Language Pathology at Nazareth University. This work deeply informs her studio teaching and her Vocal Pedagogy classes. Additionally, her degree in German Literature and her childhood spent living in Germany also give her unique German diction expertise.

As a chamber musician, Andrea has interpreted works from Hildegard von Bingen’s chants to English lute songs, medieval plays to Handel arias and countless cantatas by Bach, Telemann, Buxtehude, Händel, Monteclair, to name a few. She has performed as soloist with orchestras in performances of repertoire from Mozart’s concert arias to Handel’s Messiah and Haydn Oratorios, Bach’s passions, as well as the Mass in B Minor with original instrument orchestras, to Brahms’ Requiem and Orf’s Carmina Burana, to name but a few. She made her Lincoln Center debut as a featured soloist with the American Symphony Orchestra in a rarely performed Haydn oratorio, Il ritorno di Tobias, and received a glowing review in the New York Times.

Andrea’s performance practice career included roles in “early music” opera productions, including that of Belinda in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, La Musica, Euridice, and Speranza in Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, Bastienne in Mozart’s Bastian und Bastienne, Silberklang and Herz in Mozart’s Der Schauspieldirektor, Lieschen in Bach’s Coffee Cantata, Galatea in Handel’s Acis and Galatea, to name some of her dramatic activities as a “early music” specialist. Many productions included baroque dance, a skill set that greatly informs Andrea’s coaching of this repertoire. Additional specialized performance practice training came by way of her fellowships to the Bach Aria Institute, Aston Magna, and two years at the Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute. Early music ensembles with which she has appeared include Publick Musick, the Folger Consort (Washington DC, as the title role in their 13th century French romance, “Romance of the Rose, as well as in their touring company, and featured in a National Endowment of the Humanities supported video production), NYS Baroque, Apollo’s Fire, and the Mannes Camerata.

Andrea also has opera experience, having starred as Baby Doe in the Ballad of Baby Doe with the Lancaster Opera Company, Gretel in Hansel and Gretel with the Ithaca Opera Company, and as Nanetta in Falstaff, Adele in Die Fledermaus, and Gretel with the Oberlin Opera Theater.

School of Music Responsibilities

  • Applied Voice
  • Vocal Pedagogy
  • Diction I and II

Education

  • Syracuse University, M.M.
  • Oberlin Conservatory of Music, B.M.
  • Oberlin College, B.A.

Andrea Folan