About Gabriella Snyder

Gabriella Snyder is a mezzo-soprano, voice teacher, and composer of music drama/opera, solo vocal, choral and instrumental music. Her one-act opera, The Rough-Face Girl: An Algonquin Cinderella, was premiered by Lynn-based MassTheatrica in October 2009. Her three-act musical 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 conductor, organ, five soloists, and members of the Saengerfest Men's Chorus and Concord Madrigals.

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. Snyder has also written piano etudes, Duo for Violin and Cello, instrumental, choral and solo vocal pieces. One of her choral anthems, an arrangement of the Christmas song Stars of Glory, was published in 2008 by GIA Publications in Chicago.

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 Boheme, 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 has served as Interim Music Minister and soprano soloist at St. Paul's Episcopal Church of Malden, MA, and soloist/section leader at First Baptist Church of Malden, and as a soloist at many churches in a number of denominations.

Not only a classical musician, Ms. Snyder also 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 performed from 1993 to 1997 with 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, England, Ireland 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 played 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 was a student of the late David Blair McClosky of Boston Conservatory, known as John F. Kennedy's vocal coach during the presidential campaign in 1960. She learned the Berton Coffin method (phonetic basis of bel canto) from Robert Gartside, retired professor of the Voice Faculty at Boston University's School for the Arts. Ms. Snyder 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. Snyder continues to teach singing privately. She and her husband make their home in Malden, MA, where since 1992 she has worked with Bread of Life, a faith-based volunteer organization that provides free food for homeless individuals, working families, the elderly and disabled.