Exploring the Soul with Maren Montalbano

Opera Uprising

Maren Montalbano began her vocal career with the San Francisco Girls Chorus at age seven, and has been singing ever since. A graduate of both New England Conservatory of Music and Tufts University, Ms. Montalbano can be heard in three GRAMMY Award-winning albums: John Adams’ Pulitzer Prize-winning work, On the Transmigration of Souls (2005), and Gavin Bryars’ The Fifth Century (2018), and Lansing McLoskey’s Zealot Canticles (2019), on which she is a featured soloist. She recorded Douglas Cuomo’s opera Arjuna’s Dilemma with Anonymous 4 members Susan Hellauer and Jacqueline Horner, which was released in 2008 to critical acclaim. She appears on over a dozen commercial recordings, including Alice Parker’s Listen Lord and The Family Reunion, Kile Smith’s Vespers, Lewis Spratlan’s Hesperus is Phosphorus, and Ted Hearne’s Sound from the Bench.

In the past five years, Ms. Montalbano has been a guest artist with Lyric Fest, Choral Arts Philadelphia, Network for New Music and Piffaro, the Renaissance Band. When she performed the modern premiere of Destinos vencen finezas, a 17th century zarzuela by Juan Francisco de Navas, with Philadelphia’s Baroque orchestra, Tempesta di Mare, her dramatic interpretation was hailed as “pure, suave and sensuous” (Philadelphia Inquirer, March 2015). When she premiered the role of Andy Warhol #2 in Andy: a POPera (Bearded Ladies Cabaret and Opera Philadelphia), the Broad Street Review called her singing “impeccable.”

Her debut album, Sea Tangle: Songs from the North, featuring all women composers and performers, was released in December 2016.

During the pandemic of 2020-21, Ms. Montalbano turned to the digital world. She wrote, produced, and starred in an interactive digital one-woman show called The Bodice Ripper Project, which had its world premiere at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival, and she started a podcast of the same name. Other pandemic world premiere projects include David Lang’s in nature (The Crossing/Warren Miller Performing Arts Center), Pete Wyer’s Spring Street Opera (American Opera Projects), and the release of six different commercial albums with various collaborators.

The 2021-22 season features Ms. Montalbano in more world premieres, both live and digital, from a podcast musical by Jennifer Rosenfeld to a work by Lansing McLoskey honoring the 100th anniversary of James Joyce’s Ulysses.

Ms. Montalbano lives in New Jersey and sings professionally throughout a wide geographic area with such groups as Opera Company of Philadelphia, Trio Eos, and The Crossing. She is passionate about keeping artists employed doing what they do best. Ms. Montalbano currently studies voice with Julianne Baird.